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DEMOCRACY 
AND   OTHER  ADDRESSES 


BY 


JAMES  RUSSELL  ^LOWELL 


BOSTON  AND   NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 


1887 


Copyright,  1886, 
Br  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL. 

AU  rights  reserved. 


FIFTH    THOUSAND 


The  Riverside  Press,  Cambridge: 
Electrotype*  and  Printed  by  H.  0.  Houghton  &  Co. 


GIFT 


d*, 


To  G.  W.  SMALLEY,  ESQ. 

MY  DEAR  SMALLEY,  —  You  heard  several  of 
these  Addresses  delivered,  and  were  good  enough  to 
think  better  of  them  than  I  did.  As  this  was  one 
of  my  encouragements  to  repeat  them  before  a  larger 
audience,  perhaps  you  will  accept  the  dedication  of 
the  volume  which  contains  them. 

Faithfully  yours,  J.  R.  LOWELL. 

DEERFOOT  FARM,  November  10.  1886. 


902 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

DEMOCRACY 1 

INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  ON  ASSUMING  THE  PRESI 
DENCY  OF  THE  BIRMINGHAM  AND  MIDLAND  IN 
STITUTE,  BIRMINGHAM,  ENGLAND,  6  OCTOBER, 

1884. 

GARFIELD 43 

SPOKEN  ON  THE  DEATH  OF  PRESIDENT  GAR- 
FIELD  AT  THE  MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  EXETER 
HALL,  LONDON,  24  SEPTEMBER,  1881. 

STANLEY 57 

SPEECH  AT  THE  MEETING  IN  THE  CHAPTER 
HOUSE  OF  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  IN  COMMEMO 
RATION  OF  DEAN  STANLEY,  13  DECEMBER,  1881. 

FIELDING 65 

ADDRESS  ON  UNVEILING  THE  BUST  OF  FIELD 
ING,  DELIVERED  AT  SHIRE  HALL,  TAUNTON, 

SOMERSETSHIRE,  ENGLAND,  4  SEPTEMBER,  1883. 

COLERIDGE 89 

ADDRESS  ON  UNVEILING  THE  BUST  OF  COLE 
RIDGE  AT  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY,  7  MAY,  1885. 

BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES 105 

ADDRESS  AT  THE  OPENING  OF  FREE  PUBLIC 
LIBRARY  IN  CHELSEA,  MASSACHUSETTS,  22  DE 
CEMBER,  1885. 

WORDSWORTH 135 

ADDRESS  AS  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  WORDS 
WORTH  SOCIETY,  10  MAY,  1884. 


vi  CONTENTS. 

DON  QUIXOTE 157 

NOTES   READ   AT  THE  WORKINGMEN'S  COLLEGE, 

GREAT  ORMOND  STREET,  LONDON. 

HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY 187 

ADDRESS  DELIVERED  IN  SANDERS  THEATRE, 
CAMBRIDGE,  NOVEMBER  8,  1886,  ON  THE  Two 
HUNDRED  AND  FIFTIETH  ANNIVERSARY  OF  THE 
FOUNDATION  OF  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY. 


DEMOCRACY. 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  ON  ASSUMING  THE  PRESIDENCY 

OF  THE  BIRMINGHAM  AND  MIDLAND  INSTITUTE, 

BIRMINGHAM,  ENGLAND,  6  OCTOBER,  1884. 


DEMOCRACY. 


HE  must  be  a  born  leader  or  misleader 
of  men,  or  must  have  been  sent  into  the 
world  unfurnished  with  that  modulating  and 
restraining  balance-wheel  which  we  call  a 
sense  of  humor,  who,  in  old  age,  has  as 
strong  a  confidence  in  his  opinions  and  in 
the  necessity  of  bringing  the  universe  into 
conformity  with  them  as  he  had  in  youth. 
In  a  world  the  very  condition  of  whose  be 
ing  is  that  it  should  be  in  perpetual  flux, 
where  all  seems  mirage,  and  the  one  abiding 
thing  is  the  effort  to  distinguish  realities 
from  appearances,  the  elderly  man  must  be 
indeed  of  a  singularly  tough  and  valid  fibre 
who  is  certain  that  he  has  any  clarified  re 
siduum  of  experience,  any  assured  verdict  of 
reflection,  that  deserves  to  be  called  an  opin 
ion,  or  who,  even  if  he  had,  feels  that  he  is 
justified  in  holding  mankind  by  the  button 
while  he  is  expounding  it.  And  in  a  world 


4  DEMOCRACY. 

of  daily  —  nay,  almost  hourly  —  journalism, 
where  every  clever  man,  every  man  who 
thinks  himself  clever,  or  whom  anybody  else 
thinks  clever,  is  called  upon  to  deliver  his 
judgment  point-blank  and  at  the  word  of 
command  on  every  conceivable  subject  of 
human  thought,  or,  on  what  sometimes  seems 
to  him  very  much  the  same  thing,  on  every 
inconceivable  display  of  human  want  of 
thought,  there  is  such  a  spendthrift  waste  of 
all  those  commonplaces  which  furnish  the 
permitted  staple  of  public  discourse  that 
there  is  little  chance  of  beguiling  a  new 
tune  out  of  the  one-stringed  instrument  on 
which  we  have  been  thrumming  so  long.  In 
this  desperate  necessity  one  is  often  tempted 
to  think  that,  if  all  the  words  of  the  diction 
ary  were  tumbled  down  in  a  heap  and  then 
all  those  fortuitous  juxtapositions  and  com 
binations  that  made  tolerable  sense  were 
picked  out  and  pieced  together,  we  might 
find  among  them  some  poignant  suggestions 
towards  novelty  of  thought  or  expression. 
But,  alas !  it  is  only  the  great  poets  who 
seem  to  have  this  unsolicited  profusion  of 
unexpected  and  incalculable  phrase,  this  in 
finite  variety  of  topic.  For  everybody  else 
everything  has  been  said  before,  and  said 


DEMOCRACY.  5 

over  again  after.    He  who  has  read  his  Aris 
totle  will  be  apt  to  think  that  observation 
has  on  most  points  of  general  applicability 
said  its  last  word,  and  he  who  has  mounted 
the  tower  of  Plato  to  look  abroad  from  it 
will   never  hope   to  climb   another  with  so 
lofty  a  vantage  of  speculation.     Where  it  is 
so  simple  if  not  so  easy  a  thing  to  hold  one's 
peace,  why  add  to  the  general  confusion  of 
tongues  ?    There  is  something  disheartening, 
too,  in  being  expected  to  fill  up  not  less  than 
a  certain  measure  of  time,  as  if  the  mind 
were  an  hour-glass,  that  need  only  be  shaken 
and  set  on  one  end  or  the  other,  as  the  case 
may  be,  to  run  its  allotted  sixty  minutes  with 
decorous  exactitude.     I  recollect  being  once 
told  by  the  late  eminent  naturalist  Agassiz 
that  when  he  was  to  deliver  his  first  lecture 
as  professor  (at  Zurich,  I  believe)  he  had 
grave  doubts  of  his  ability  to  occupy  the  pre 
scribed  three  quarters  of  an  hour.     He  was 
speaking  without  notes,  and   glancing  anx 
iously  from  time  to  time  at  the  watch  that 
lay  before  him  on  the  desk.     "  When  I  had 
spoken  a  half  hour,"  he  said,  "  I  had  told 
them  everything  I  knew  in  the  world,  every 
thing!     Then  I  began  to  repeat  myself,"  he 
added,  roguishly,  "  and  I  have  done  nothing 


6  DEMOCRACY. 

else  ever  since."  Beneath  the  humorous  ex 
aggeration  of  the  story  I  seemed  to  see  the 
face  of  a  very  serious  and  improving  moral. 
And  yet  if  one  were  to  say  only  what  he 
had  to  say  and  then  stopped,  his  audience 
would  feel  defrauded  of  their  honest  meas 
ure.  Let  us  take  courage  by  the  example 
of  the  French,  whose  exportation  of  Bor 
deaux  wines  increases  as  the  area  of  their 
land  in  vineyards  is  diminished. 

To  me,  somewhat  hopelessly  revolving 
these  things,  the  undelayable  year  has  rolled 
round,  and  I  find  myself  called  upon  to  say 
something  in  this  place,  where  so  many  wiser 
men  have  spoken  before  me.  Precluded  in 
my  quality  of  national  guest,  by  motives  of 
taste  and  discretion,  from  dealing  with  any 
question  of  immediate  and  domestic  concern, 
it  seemed  to  me  wisest,  or  at  any  rate  most 
prudent,  to  choose  a  topic  of  comparatively 
abstract  interest,  and  to  ask  your  indulgence 
for  a  few  somewhat  generalized  remarks  on 
a  matter  concerning  which  I  had  some  ex 
perimental  knowledge,  derived  from  the  use 
of  such  eyes  and  ears  as  Nature  had  been 
pleased  to  endow  me  withal,  and  such  re 
port  as  I  had  been  able  to  win  from  them. 
The  subject  which  most  readily  suggested 


DEMOCRACY.  7 

itself  was  the  spirit  and  the  working  of  those 
conceptions  of  life  and  polity  which  are 
lumped  together  whether  for  reproach  or 
commendation  under  the  name  of  Democ 
racy.  By  temperament  and  education  of  a 
conservative  turn,  I  saw  the  last  years  of 
that  quaint  Arcadia  which  French  travellers 
saw  with  delighted  amazement  a  century 
ago,  and  have  watched  the  change  (to  me  a 
sad  one)  from  an  agricultural  to  a  proletary 
population.  The  testimony  of  Balaam  should 
carry  some  conviction.  I  have  grown  to 
manhood  and  am  now  growing  old  with  the 
growth  of  this  system  of  government  in  my 
native  land,  have  watched  its  advances,  or 
what  some  would  call  its  encroachments, 
gradual  and  irresistible  as  those  of  a  glacier, 
have  been  an  ear-witness  to  the  forebodings 
of  wise  and  good  and  timid  men,  and  have 
lived  to  see  those  forebodings  belied  by  the 
course  of  events,  which  is  apt  to  show  itself 
humorously  careless  of  the  reputation  of 
prophets.  I  recollect  hearing  a  sagacious 
old  gentleman  say  in  1840  that  the  doing 
away  with  the  property  qualification  for  suf 
frage  twenty  years  before  had  been  the  ruin 
of  the  State  of  Massachusetts ;  that  it  had 
put  public  credit  and  private  estate  alike  at 


8  DEMOCRACY. 

the  mercy  of  demagogues.  I  lived  to  see 
that  Commonwealth  twenty  odd  years  later 
paying  the  interest  on  her  bonds  in  gold, 
though  it  cost  her  sometimes  nearly  three  for 
one  to  keep  her  faith,  and  that  while  suf 
fering  an  unparalleled  drain  of  men  and 
treasure  in  helping  to  sustain  the  unity  and 
self-respect  of  the  nation. 

If  universal  suffrage  has  worked  ill  in  our 
larger  cities,  as  it  certainly  has,  this  has 
been  mainly  because  the  hands  that  wielded 
it  were  untrained  to  its  use.  There  the  elec 
tion  of  a  majority  of  the  trustees  of  the  pub 
lic  money  is  controlled  by  the  most  ignorant 
and  vicious  of  a  population  which  has  come 
to  us  from  abroad,  wholly  unpractised  in 
self-government  and  incapable  of  assimila 
tion  by  American  habits  and  methods.  But 
the  finances  of  our  towns,  where  the  native 
tradition  is  still  dominant  and  whose  affairs 
are  discussed  and  settled  in  a  public  assem 
bly  of  the  people,  have  been  in  general  hon 
estly  and  prudently  administered.  Even  in 
manufacturing  towns,  where  a  majority  of 
the  voters  live  by  their  daily  wages,  it  is  not 
so  often  the  recklessness  as  the  moderation 
of  public  expenditure  that  surprises  an  old- 
fashioned  observer.  "  The  beggar  is  in  the 


DEMOCRACY.  9 

saddle  at  last,"  cries  Proverbial  Wisdom. 
"  Why,  in  the  name  of  all  former  experience, 
does  n't  he  ride  to  the  Devil  ?  "  Because  in 
the  very  act  of  mounting  he  ceased  to  be  a 
beggar  and  became  part  owner  of  the  piece 
of  property  he  bestrides.  The  last  thing  we 
need  be  anxious  about  is  property.  It  al 
ways  has  friends  or  the  means  of  making 
them.  If  riches  have  wings  to  fly  away 
from  their  owner,  they  have  wings  also  to 
escape  danger. 

I  hear  America  sometimes  playfully  ac 
cused  of  sending  you  all  your  storms,  and 
am  in  the  habit  of  parrying  the  charge  by 
alleging  that  we  are  enabled  to  do  this  be 
cause,  in  virtue  of  our  protective  system,  we 
can  afford  to  make  better  bad  weather  than 
anybody  else.  And  what  wiser  use  could  we 
make  of  it  than  to  export  it  in  return  for  the 
paupers  which  some  European  countries  are 
good  enough  to  send  over  to  us  who  have  not 
attained  to  the  same  skill  in  the  manufac 
ture  of  them  ?  But  bad  weather  is  not  the 
worst  thing  that  is  laid  at  our  door.  A 
French  gentleman,  not  long  ago,  forgetting 
Burke's  monition  of  how  unwise  it  is  to  draw 
an  indictment  against  a  whole  people,  has 
charged  us  with  the  responsibility  of  what- 


10  DEMOCRACY. 

ever  he  finds  disagreeable  in  the  morals  or 
manners  of  his  countrymen.  If  M.  Zola  or 
some  other  competent  witness  would  only  go 
into  the  box  and  tell  us  what  those  morals 
and  manners  were  before  our  example  cor 
rupted  them  !  But  I  confess  that  I  find  lit 
tle  to  interest  and  less  to  edify  me  in  these 
international  bandyings  of  "  You  're  an 
other." 

I  shall  address  myself  to  a  single  point 
only  in  the  long  list  of  offences  of  which  we 
are  more  or  less  gravely  accused,  because 
that  really  includes  all  the  rest.  It  is  that 
we  are  infecting  the  Old  World  with  what 
seems  to  be  thought  the  entirely  new  disease 
of  Democracy.  It  is  generally  people  who 
are  in  what  are  called  easy  circumstances 
who  can  afford  the  leisure  to  treat  thenj.- 
selves  to  a  handsome  complaint,  and  these 
experience  an  immediate  alleviation  when 
once  they  have  found  a  sonorous  Greek  name 
to  abuse  it  by.  There  is  something  consola 
tory  also,  something  flattering  to  their  sense 
of  personal  dignity,  and  to  that  conceit  of 
singularity  which  is  the  natural  recoil  from 
our  uneasy  consciousness  of  being  common 
place,  in  thinking  ourselves  victims  of  a 
malady  by  which  no  one  had  ever  suffered 


DEMOCRACY.  11 

before.  Accordingly  they  find  it  simpler  to 
class  under  one  comprehensive  heading  what 
ever  they  find  offensive  to  their  nerves,  their 
tastes,  their  interests,  or  what  they  suppose 
to  be  their  opinions,  and  christen  it  Democ 
racy,  much  as  physicians  label  every  obscure 
disease  gout,  or  as  cross-grained  fellows  lay 
their  ill-temper  to  the  weather.  But  is  it 
really  a  new  ailment,  and,  if  it  be,  is  Amer 
ica  answerable  for  it  ?  Even  if  she  were, 
would  it  account  for  the  phylloxera,  and 
hoof-and-mouth  disease,  and  bad  harvests, 
and  bad  English,  and  the  German  bands, 
and  the  Boers,  and  all  the  other  discomforts 
with  which  these  later  days  have  vexed  the 
souls  of  them  that  go  in  chariots?  Yet  I 
have  seen  the  evil  example  of  Democracy  in 
America  cited  as  the  source  and  origin  of 
things  quite  as  heterogeneous  and  quite  as 
little  connected  with  it  by  any  sequence  of 
cause  and  effect.  Surely  this  ferment  is 
nothing  new.  It  has  been  at  work  for  cen 
turies,  and  we  are  more  conscious  of  it  only 
because  in  this  age  of  publicity,  where  the 
newspapers  offer  a  rostrum  to  whoever  has  a 
grievance,  or  fancies  that  he  has,  the  bubbles 
and  scum  thrown  up  by  it  are  more  notice 
able  on  the  surface  than  in  those  dumb  ages 


12  DEMOCRACY. 

when  there  was  a  cover  of  silence  and  sup 
pression  on  the  cauldron.  Bernardo  Nava- 
gero,  speaking  of  the  Provinces  of  Lower 
Austria  in  1546,  tells  us  that  "  in  them  there 
are  five  sorts  of  persons,  Clergy,  Barons, 
Nobles,  Burghers,  and  Peasants.  Of  these 
last  no  account  is  made,  because  they  have 
no  voice  in  the  Diet"  l 

Nor  was  it  among  the  people  that  subver 
sive  or  mistaken  doctrines  had  their  rise.  A 
Father  of  the  Church  said  that  property  was 
theft  many  centuries  before  Proudhon  was 
born.  Bourdaloue  reaffirmed  it.  Montes 
quieu  was  the  inventor  of  national  work 
shops,  and  of  the  theory  that  the  State  owed 
every  man  a  living.  Nay,  was  not  the 
Church  herself  the  first  organized  Democ 
racy?  A  few  centuries  ago  the  chief  end 
of  man  was  to  keep  his  soul  alive,  and  then 
the  little  kernel  of  leaven  that  sets  the  gases 

1  Below  the  peasants,  it  should  be  remembered,  was 
still  another  even  more  helpless  class,  the  servile  farm- 
laborers.  The  same  witness  informs  us  that  of  the  ex 
traordinary  imposts  the  Peasants  paid  nearly  twice  as 
much  in  proportion  to  their  estimated  property  as  the 
Barons,  Nobles,  and  Burghers  together.  Moreover,  the 
upper  classes  were  assessed  at  their  own  valuation,  while 
they  arbitrarily  fixed  that  of  the  Peasants  who  had  no 
voice.  (Relazioni  degli  Ambasciatori  Veneti,  Serie  L, 
tomo  L,  pp.  378,  379,  389.) 


DEMOCRACY.  13 

at  work  was  religious,  and  produced  the 
Reformation.  Even  in  that,  far-sighted  per 
sons  like  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  saw  the 
germ  of  political  and  social  revolution.  Now 
that  the  chief  end  of  man  seems  to  have  be 
come  the  keeping  of  the  body  alive,  and  as 
comfortably  alive  as  possible,  the  leaven 
also  has  become  wholly  political  and  social. 
But  there  had  also  been  social  upheavals 
before  the  Reformation  and  contemporane 
ously  with  it,  especially  among  men  of  Teu 
tonic  race.  The  Reformation  gave  outlet 
and  direction  to  an  unrest  already  existing. 
Formerly  the  immense  majority  of  men  — 
our  brothers  —  knew  only  their  sufferings, 
their  wants,  and  their  desires.  They  are  be 
ginning  now  to  know  their  opportunity  and 
their  power.  All  persons  who  see  deeper 
than  their  plates  are  rather  inclined  to  thank 
God  for  it  than  to  bewail  it,  for  the  sores 
of  Lazarus  have  a  poison  in  them  against 
which  Dives  has  no  antidote. 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  specta 
cle  of  a  great  and  prosperous  Democracy  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic  must  react 
powerfully  on  the  aspirations  and  political 
theories  of  men  in  the  Old  World  who  do 
not  find  things  to  their  mind  ;  but,  whether 


14  DEMOCRACY. 

for  good  or  evil,  it  should  not  be  overlooked 
that  the  acorn  from  which  it  sprang  was 
ripened  on  the  British  oak.  Every  suc 
cessive  swarm  that  has  gone  out  from  this 
officina  gentium  has,  when  left  to  its  own 
instincts  —  may  I  not  call  them  hereditary 
instincts  ?  —  assumed  a  more  or  less  thor 
oughly  democratic  form.  This  would  seem 
to  show,  what  I  believe  to  be  the  fact,  that 
the  British  Constitution,  under  whatever 
disguises  of  prudence  or  decorum,  is  essen 
tially  democratic.  England,  indeed,  may  be 
called  a  monarchy  with  democratic  tenden 
cies,  the  United  States  a  democracy  with  con 
servative  instincts.  People  are  continually 
saying  that  America  is  in  the  air,  and  I  am 
glad  to  think  it  is,  since  this  means  only 
that  a  clearer  conception  of  human  claims 
and  human  duties  is  beginning  to  be  preva 
lent.  The  discontent  with  the  existing  order 
of  things,  however,  pervaded  the  atmosphere 
wherever  the  conditions  were  favorable,  long 
before  Columbus,  seeking  the  back  door  of 
Asia,  found  himself  knocking  at  the  front 
door  of  America.  I  say  wherever  the  con 
ditions  were  favorable,  for  it  is  certain  that 
the  germs  of  disease  do  not  stick  or  find  a 
prosperous  field  for  their  development  and 


DEMOCRACY.  15 

noxious  activity  unless  where  the  simplest 
sanitary  precautions  have  been  neglected. 
"  For  this  effect  defective  comes  by  cause," 
as  Polonius  said  long  ago.  It  is  only  by  in 
stigation  of  the  wrongs  of  men  that  what  are 
called  the  Rights  of  Man  become  turbulent 
and  dangerous.  It  is  then  only  that  they 
syllogize  unwelcome  truths.  It  is  not  the 
insurrections  of  ignorance  that  are  danger 
ous,  but  the  revolts  of  intelligence  :  — 

The  wicked  and  the  weak  rebel  in  vain, 
Slaves  by  their  own  compulsion. 

Had  the  governing  classes  in  France  during 
the  last  century  paid  as  much  heed  to  their 
proper  business  as  to  their  pleasures  or  man 
ners,  the  guillotine  need  never  have  severed 
that  spinal  marrow  of  orderly  and  secular 
tradition  through  which  in  a  normally  con 
stituted  state  the  brain  sympathizes  with  the 
extremities  and  sends  will  and  impulsion 
thither.  It  is  only  when  the  reasonable  and 
practicable  are  denied  that  men  demand  the 
unreasonable  and  impracticable  ;  only  when 
the  possible  is  made  difficult  that  they  fancy 
the  impossible  to  be  easy.  Fairy  tales  are 
made  out  of  the  dreams  of  the  poor.  No ; 
the  sentiment  which  lies  at  the  root  of  de 
mocracy  is  nothing  new.  I  am  speaking  al- 


16  DEMOCRACY. 

ways  of  a  sentiment,  a  spirit,  and  not  of  a 
form  of  government ;  for  this  was  but  the 
outgrowth  of  the  other  and  not  its  cause. 
This  sentiment  is  merely  an  expression  of 
the  natural  wish  of  people  to  have  a  hand, 
if  need  be  a  controlling  hand,  in  the  man 
agement  of  their  own  affairs.  What  is  new 
is  that  they  are  more  and  more  gaining  that 
control,  and  learning  more  and  more  how 
to  be  worthy  of  it.  What  we  used  to  call 
the  tendency  or  drift  —  what  we  are  being 
taught  to  call  more  wisely  the  evolution  of 
things  —  has  for  some  time  been  setting 
steadily  in  this  direction.  There  is  no  good 
in  arguing  with  the  inevitable.  The  only 
argument  available  with  an  east  wind  is  to 
put  on  your  overcoat.  And  in  this  case, 
also,  the  prudent  will  prepare  themselves  to 
encounter  what  they  cannot  prevent.  Some 
people  advise  us  to  put  on  the  brakes,  as 
if  the  movement  of  which  we  are  conscious 
were  that  of  a  railway  train  running  down 
an  incline.  But  a  metaphor  is  no  argu 
ment,  though  it  be  sometimes  the  gunpow 
der  to  drive  one  home  and  imbed  it  in  the 
memory.  Our  disquiet  comes  of  what  nurses 
and  other  experienced  persons  call  grow 
ing-pains,  and  need  not  seriously  alarm  us. 


DEMOCRACY.  17 

They  are  what  every  generation  before  us 
—  certainly  every  generation  since  the  in 
vention  of  printing  —  has  gone  through  with 
more  or  less  good  fortune.  To  the  door  of 
every  generation  there  comes  a  knocking, 
and  unless  the  household,  like  the  Thane  of 
Cawdor  and  his  wife,  have  been  doing  some 
deed  without  a  name,  they  need  not  shudder. 
It  turns  out  at  worst  to  be  a  poor  relation 
who  wishes  to  come  in  out  of  the  cold.  The 
porter  always  grumbles  and  is  slow  to  open 
— "  Who 's  there,  in  the  name  of  Beelze 
bub  ?  "  he  mutters.  Not  a  change  for  the 
better  in  our  human  housekeeping  has  ever 
taken  place  that  wise  and  good  men  have  not 
opposed  it,  —  have  not  prophesied  with  the 
alderman  that  the  world  would  wake  up  to 
find  its  throat  cut  in  consequence  of  it.  The 
world,  on  the  contrary,  wakes  up,  rubs  its 
eyes,  yawns,  stretches  itself,  and  goes  about 
its  business  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 
Suppression  of  the  slave  trade,  abolition  of 
slavery,  trade  unions,  —  at  all  of  these  excel 
lent  people  shook  their  heads  despondingly, 
and  murmured  "  Ichabod."  But  the  trade 
unions  are  now  debating  instead  of  conspir 
ing,  and  we  all  read  their  discussions  with 
comfort  and  hope,  sure  that  they  are  learn- 


18  DEMOCRACY. 

ing  the  business  of  citizenship  and  the  diffi 
culties  of  practical  legislation. 

One  of  the  most  curious  of  these  frenzies 
of  exclusion  was  that  against  the  emancipa 
tion  of  the  Jews.  All  share  in  the  govern 
ment  of  the  world  was  denied  for  centuries 
to  perhaps  the  ablest,  certainly  the  most 
tenacious,  race  that  had  ever  lived  in  it  — 
the  race  to  whom  we  owed  our  religion  and 
the  purest  spiritual  stimulus  and  consolation 
to  be  found  in  all  literature — a  race  in 
which  ability  seems  as  natural  and  heredi 
tary  as  the  curve  of  their  noses,  and  whose 
blood,  furtively  mingling  with  the  bluest 
bloods  in  Europe,  has  quickened  them  with 
its  own  indomitable  impulsion.  We  drove 
them  into  a  corner,  but  they  had  their  re 
venge,  as  the  wronged  are  always  sure  to 
have  it  sooner  or  later.  They  made  their 
corner  the  counter  and  banking-house  of  the 
world,  and  thence  they  rule  it  and  us  with  the 
ignobler  sceptre  of  finance.  Your  grandfa 
thers  mobbed  Priestley  only  that  you  might 
set  up  his  statue  and  make  Birmingham 
the  headquarters  of  English  Unitarianism. 
We  hear  it  said  sometimes  that  this  is  an 
age  of  transition,  as  if  that  made  matters 
clearer ;  but  can  any  one  point  us  to  an  age 


DEMOCRACY.  19 

that  was  not  ?  If  he  could,  he  would  show 
us  an  age  of  stagnation.  The  question  for 
us,  as  it  has  been  for  all  before  us,  is  to 
make  the  transition  gradual  and  easy,  to 
see  that  our  points  are  right  so  that  the 
train  may  not  come  to  grief.  For  we  should 
remember  that  nothing  is  more  natural  for 
people  whose  education  has  been  neglected 
than  to  spell  evolution  with  an  initial  "  r." 
A  great  man  struggling  with  the  storms  of 
fate  has  been  called  a  sublime  spectacle ;  but 
surely  a  great  man  wrestling  with  these  new 
forces  that  have  come  into  the  world,  master 
ing  them  and  controlling  them  to  benefi 
cent  ends,  would  be  a  yet  sublimer.  Here 
is  not  a  danger,  and  if  there  were  it  would 
be  only  a  better  school  of  manhood,  a  nobler 
scope  for  ambition.  I  have  hinted  that  what 
people  are  afraid  of  in  democracy  is  less  the 
thing  itself  than  what  they  conceive  to  be  its 
necessary  adjuncts  and  consequences.  It  is 
supposed  to  reduce  all  mankind  to  a  dead 
level  of  mediocrity  in  character  and  culture, 
to  vulgarize  men's  conceptions  of  life,  and 
therefore  their  code  of  morals,  manners,  and 
conduct  —  to  endanger  the  rights  of  prop 
erty  and  possession.  But  I  believe  that  the 
real  gravamen  of  the  charges  lies  in  the 


20  DEMOCRACY. 

habit  it  has  of  making  itself  generally  dis 
agreeable  by  asking  the  Powers  that  Be  at 
the  most  inconvenient  moment  whether  they 
are  the  powers  that  ought  to  be.  If  the 
powers  that  be  are  in  a  condition  to  give  a 
satisfactory  answer  to  this  inevitable  ques 
tion,  they  need  feel  in  no  way  discomfited 
by  it. 

Few  people  take  the  trouble  of  trying  to 
find  out  what  democracy  really  is.  Yet  this 
would  be  a  great  help,  for  it  is  our  lawless 
and  uncertain  thoughts,  it  is  the  indefinite- 
ness  of  our  impressions,  that  fill  darkness, 
whether  mental  or  physical,  with  spectres 
and  hobgoblins.  Democracy  is  nothing  more 
than  an  experiment  in  government,  more 
likely  to  succeed  in  a  new  soil,  but  likely  to 
be  tried  in  all  soils,  which  must  stand  or  fall 
on  its  own  merits  as  others  have  done  before 
it.  For  there  is  no  trick  of  perpetual  mo 
tion  in  politics  any  more  than  in  mechanics. 
President  Lincoln  defined  democracy  to  be 
"  the  government  of  the  people  by  the  peo 
ple  for  the  people."  This  is  a  sufficiently 
compact  statement  of  it  as  a  political  ar 
rangement.  Theodore  Parker  said  that 
"  Democracy  meant  not  '  I  'm  as  good  as 
you  are,'  but  4  You  're  as  good  as  I  am.'  " 


DEMOCRACY.  21 

And  this  is  the  ethical  conception  of  it,  nec 
essary  as  a  complement  of  the  other  ;  a  con 
ception  which,  could  it  be  made  actual  and 
practical,  would  easily  solve  all  the  riddles 
that  the  old  sphinx  of  political  and  social 
economy  who  sits  by  the  roadside  has  been 
proposing  to  mankind  from  the  beginning, 
and  which  mankind  have  shown  such  a  sin 
gular  talent  for  answering  wrongly.  In  this 
sense  Christ  was  the  first  true  democrat  that 
ever  breathed,  as  the  old  dramatist  Dekker 
said  he  was  the  first  true  gentleman.  The 
characters  may  be  easily  doubled,  so  strong 
is  the  likeness  between  them.  A  beautiful 
and  profound  parable  of  the  Persian  poet 
Jellaladeen  tells  us  that  "  One  knocked  at 
the  Beloved's  door,  and  a  voice  asked  from 
within  '  Who  is  there  ?  '  and  he  answered 
4  It  is  I.'  Then  the  voice  said,  '  This  house 
will  not  hold  me  and  thee ; '  and  the  door 
was  not  opened.  Then  went  the  lover  into 
the  desert  and  fasted  and  prayed  in  solitude, 
and  after  a  year  he  returned  and  knocked 
again  at  the  door  ;  and  again  the  voice 
asked  '  Who  is  there  ? '  and  he  said  '  It  is 
thyself  ; '  and  the  door  was  opened  to  him." 
But  that  is  idealism,  you  will  say,  and  this 
is  an  only  too  practical  world.  I  grant  it ; 


22  DEMOCRACY. 

but  I  am  one  of  those  who  believe  that  the 
real  will  never  find  an  irremovable  basis  till 
it  rests  on  the  ideal.  It  used  to  be  thought 
that  a  democracy  was  possible  only  in  a 
small  territory,  and  this  is  doubtless  true  of 
a  democracy  strictly  defined,  for  in  such  all 
the  citizens  decide  directly  upon  every  ques 
tion  of  public  concern  in  a  general  assem 
bly.  An  example  still  survives  in  the  tiny 
Swiss  canton  of  Appenzell.  But  this  imme 
diate  intervention  of  the  people  in  their  own 
affairs  is  not  of  the  essence  of  democracy  ;  it 
is  not  necessary,  nor  indeed,  in  most  cases, 
practicable.  Democracies  to  which  Mr.  Lin 
coln's  definition  would  fairly  enough  apply 
have  existed,  and  now  exist,  in  which,  though 
the  supreme  authority  reside  in  the  people, 
yet  they  can  act  only  indirectly  on  the  na 
tional  policy.  This  generation  has  seen  a 
democracy  with  an  imperial  figurehead,  and 
in  all  that  have  ever  existed  the  body  politic 
has  never  embraced  all  the  inhabitants  in 
cluded  within  its  territory,  the  right  to  share 
in  the  direction  of  affairs  has  been  confined 
to  citizens,  and  citizenship  has  been  further 
restricted  by  various  limitations,  sometimes 
of  property,  sometimes  of  nativity,  and  al 
ways  of  age  and  sex. 


DEMOCRACY.  23 

The  framers  of  the  American  Constitu 
tion  were  far  from  wishing  or  intending  to 
found  a  democracy  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
word,  though,  as  was  inevitable,  every  ex 
pansion  of  the  scheme  of  government  they 
elaborated  has  been  in  a  democratical  direc 
tion.  But  this  has  been  generally  the  slow 
result  of  growth,  and  not  the  sudden  innova 
tion  of  theory ;  in  fact,  they  had  a  profound 
disbelief  in  theory,  and  knew  better  than  to 
commit  the  folly  of  breaking  with  the  past. 
They  were  not  seduced  by  the  French  fal 
lacy  that  a  new  system  of  government  could 
be  ordered  like  a  new  suit  of  clothes.  They 
would  as  soon  have  thought  of  ordering  a 
ii^w  suit  of  flesh  and  skin.  It  is  only  on  the 
roaring  loom  of  time  that  the  stuff  is  woven 
for  such  a  vesture  of  their  thought  and  ex 
perience  as  they  were  meditating.  They 
recognized  fully  the  value  of  tradition  and 
abit  as  the  great  allies  of  permanence  and 
stability.  They  all  had  that  distaste  for  in 
novation  which  belonged  to  their  race,  and 
many  of  them  a  distrust  of  human  nature 
derived  from  their  creed.  The  day  of  senti 
ment  was  over,  and  no  dithyrambic  affirma 
tions  or  fine-drawn  analyses  of  the  Rights  of 
Man  would  serve  their  present  turn.  This 


24  DEMOCRACY. 

was  a  practical  question,  and  they  addressed 
themselves  to  it  as  men  of  knowledge  and 
judgment  should.  Their  problem  was  how 
to  adapt  English  principles  and  precedents 
to  the  new  conditions  of  American  life,  and 
they  solved  it  with  singular  discretion.  They 
put  as  many  obstacles  as  they  could  contrive, 
not  in  the  way  of  the  people's  will,  but  of 
their  whim.  With  few  exceptions  they  prob 
ably  admitted  the  logic  of  the  then  accepted 
syllogism,  —  democracy,  anarchy,  despotism. 
But  this  formula  was  framed  upon  the  expe 
rience  of  small  cities  shut  up  to  stew  within 
their  narrow  walls,  where  the  number  of 
citizens  made  but  an  inconsiderable  fraction 
of  the  inhabitants,  where  every  passion  was 
reverberated  from  house  to  house  and  from 
man  to  man  with  gathering  rumor  till  every 
impulse  became  gregarious  and  therefore 
inconsiderate,  and  every  popular  assembly 
needed  but  an  infusion  of  eloquent  sophis 
try  to  turn  it  into  a  mob,  all  the  more  dan 
gerous  because  sanctified  with  the  formality 
of  law.1 

1  The  effect  of  the  electric  telegraph  in  reproducing- 
this  trooping  of  emotion  and  perhaps  of  opinion  is  yet  to 
be  measured.  The  effect  of  Darwinism  as  a  disintegra 
tor  of  humanitarianism  is  also  to  be  reckoned  with. 


DEMOCRACY.  25 

Fortunately  their  case  was  wholly  different. 
They  were  to  legislate  for  a  widely-scattered 
population  and  for  States  already  practised 
in  the  discipline  of  a  partial  independence. 
They  had  an  unequalled  opportunity  and 
enormous  advantages.  The  material  they 
had  to  work  upon  was  already  democratical 
>y  instinct  and  habitude.  It  was  tempered 
to  their  hands  by  more  than  a  century's 
schooling  in  self-government.  They  had  but 
to  give  permanent  and  conservative  form  to 
a  ductile  mass.  In  giving  impulse  and  di 
rection  to  their  new  institutions,  especially 
in  supplying  them  with  checks  and  balances, 
they  had  a  great  help  and  safeguard  in  their 
federal  organization.  The  different,  some 
times  conflicting,  interests  and  social  systems 
of  the  several  States  made  existence  as  a 
Union  and  coalescence  into  a  nation  condi 
tional  on  a  constant  practice  of  moderation 
and  compromise.  The  very  elements  of  dis 
integration  were  the  best  guides  in  political 
training.  Their  children  learned  the  lesson 
of  compromise  only  too  well,  and  it  was  the 
application  of  it  to  a  question  of  fundamen 
tal  morals  that  cost  us  our  civil  war.  We 
learned  once  for  all  that  compromise  makes 
a  good  umbrella  but  a  poor  roof  ;  that  it  is 


26  DEMOCRACY. 

a  temporary  expedient,  often  wise  in  party 
politics,  almost  sure  to  be  unwise  in  states 
manship. 

Has  not  the  trial  of  democracy  in  Amer 
ica  proved,  on  the  whole,  successful  ?  If  it 
had  not,  would  the  Old  World  be  vexed 
with  any  fears  of  its  proving  contagious  ? 
This  trial  would  have  been  less  severe  could 
it  have  been  made  with  a  people  homogene 
ous  in  race,  language,  and  traditions,  whereas 
the  United  States  have  been  called  on  to 
absorb  and  assimilate  enormous  masses  of 
foreign  population,  heterogeneous  in  all 
these  respects,  and  drawn  mainly  from  that 
class  which  might  fairly  say  that  the  world 
was  not  their  friend,  nor  the  world's  law. 
The  previous  condition  too  often  justified 
the  traditional  Irishman,  who,  landing  in 
New  York  and  asked  what  his  politics  were, 
inquired  if  there  was  a  Government  there, 
and  on  being  told  that  there  was,  retorted, 
"  Thin  I  'm  agin  it !  "  We  have  taken  from 
Europe  the  poorest,  the  most  ignorant,  the 
most  turbulent  of  her  people,  and  have  made 
them  over  into  good  citizens,  who  have  added 
to  our  wealth,  and  who  are  ready  to  die  in 
defence  of  a  country  and  of  institutions 
which  they  know  to  be  worth  dying  for. 


DEMOCRACY.  27 

The  exceptions  have  been  (and  they  are 
lamentable  exceptions)  where  these  hordes 
of  ignorance  and  poverty  have  coagulated  in 
great  cities.  But  the  social  system  is  yet  to 
seek  which  has  not  to  look  the  same  terrible 
wolf  in  the  eyes.  On  the  other  hand,  at  this 
very  moment  Irish  peasants  are  buying  up 
the  worn-out  farms  of  Massachusetts,  and 
making  them  productive  again  by  the  same 
virtues  of  industry  and  thrift  that  once  made 
them  profitable  to  the  English  ancestors  of 
the  men  who  are  deserting  them.  To  have 
achieved  even  these  prosaic  results  (if  you 
choose  to  call  them  so),  and  that  out  of  ma 
terials  the  most  discordant,  —  I  might  say 
the  most  recalcitrant,  —  argues  a  certain  be 
neficent  virtue  in  the  system  that  could  do 
it,  and  is  not  to  be  accounted  for  by  mere 
luck.  Carlyle  said  scornfully  that  America 
meant  only  roast  turkey  every  day  for  every 
body.  He  forgot  that  States,  as  Bacon  said 
of  wars,  go  on  their  bellies.  As  for  the 
security  of  property,  it  should  be  tolerably 
well  secured  in  a,  country  where  every  other 
man  hopes  to  be  rich,  even  though  the  only 
property  qualification  be  the  ownership  of 
two  hands  that  add  to  the  general  wealth. 
Is  it  not  the  best  security  for  anything  to 


28  DEMOCRACY. 

interest  the  largest  possible  number  of  per 
sons  in  its  preservation  and  the  smallest  in 
its  division?  In  point  of  fact,  far-seeing 
men  count  the  increasing  power  of  wealth 
and  its  combinations  as  one  of  the  chief  dan 
gers  with  which  the  institutions  of  the  United 
States  are  threatened  in  the  not  distant  fu 
ture.  The  right  of  individual  property  is 
no  doubt  the  very  corner-stone  of  civilization 
as  hitherto  understood,  but  I  am  a  little  im 
patient  of  being  told  that  property  is  enti 
tled  to  exceptional  consideration  because  it 
bears  all  the  burdens  of  the  State.  It  bears 
those,  indeed,  which  can  most  easily  be  borne, 
but  poverty  pays  with  its  person  the  chief 
expenses  of  war,  pestilence,  and  famine. 
Wealth  should  not  forget  this,  for  poverty 
is  beginning  to  think  of  it  now  and  then. 
Let  me  not  be  misunderstood.  I  see  as 
clearly  as  any  man  possibly  can,  and  rate  as 
highly,  the  value  of  wealth,  and  of  heredi 
tary  wealth,  as  the  security  of  refinement, 
the  feeder  of  all  those  arts  that  ennoble  and 
beautify  life,  and  as  making  a  country  worth 
living  in.  Many  an  ancestral  hall  here  in 
England  has  been  a  nursery  of  that  culture 
which  has  been  of  example  and  benefit  to 
all.  Old  gold  has  a  civilizing  virtue  which 


DEMOCRACY.  29 

new  gold  must  grow  old  to  be  capable  of 
secreting. 

I  should  not  think  of  coming  before  you 
to  defend  or  to  criticise  any  form  of  govern 
ment.  All  have  their  virtues,  all  their  de 
fects,  and  all  have  illustrated  one  period  or 
another  in  the  history  of  the  race,  with  sig 
nal  services  to  humanity  and  culture.  There 
is  not  one  that  could  stand  a  cynical  cross- 
examination  by  an  experienced  criminal  law 
yer,  except  that  of  a  perfectly  wise  and  per 
fectly  good  despot,  such  as  the  world  has 
never  seen,  except  in  that  white-haired  king 
of  Browning's,  who 

' '  Lived  long  ago 
In  the  morning  of  the  world, 
When  Earth  was  nearer  Heaven  than  now." 

The  English  race,  if  they  did  not  invent 
government  by  discussion,  have  at  least  car 
ried  it  nearest  to  perfection  in  practice.  It 
seems  a  very  safe  and  reasonable  contrivance 
for  occupying  the  attention  of  the  country, 
and  is  certainly  a  better  way  of  settling 
questions  than  by  push  of  pike.  Yet,  if  one 
should  ask  it  why  it  should  not  rather  be 
called  government  by  gabble,  it  would  have 
to  fumble  in  its  pocket  a  good  while  before 
it  found  the  change  for  a  convincing  reply. 


30  DEMOCRACY. 

As  matters  stand,  too,  it  is  beginning  to  be 
doubtful  whether  Parliament  and  Congress 
sit  at  Westminster  and  Washington  or  in 
the  editors'  rooms  of  the  leading  journals, 
so  thoroughly  is  everything  debated  before 
the  authorized  and  responsible  debaters  get 
on  their  legs.  And  what  shall  we  say  of 
government  by  a  majority  of  voices  ?  To  a 
person  who  in  the  last  century  would  have 
called  himself  an  Impartial  Observer,  a  nu 
merical  preponderance  seems,  on  the  whole, 
as  clumsy  a  way  of  arriving  at  truth  as  could 
well  be  devised,  but  experience  has  appar 
ently  shown  it  to  be  a  convenient  arrange 
ment  for  determining  what  may  be  expedi 
ent  or  advisable  or  practicable  at  any  given 
moment.  Truth,  after  all,  wears  a  different 
face  to  everybody,  and  it  would  be  too  te 
dious  to  wait  till  all  were  agreed.  She  is  said 
to  lie  at  the  bottom  of  a  well,  for  the  very 
reason,  perhaps,  that  whoever  looks  down  in 
search  of  her  sees  his  own  image  at  the  bot 
tom,  and  is  persuaded  not  only  that  he  has 
seen  the  goddess,  but  that  she  is  far  better- 
looking  than  he  had  imagined. 

The  arguments  against  universal  suffrage 
are  equally  unanswerable.  "  What,"  we  ex 
claim,  "  shall  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  have  as 


DEMOCRACY.  31 

much  weight  in  the  scale  as  I  ?  "  Of  course, 
nothing  could  be  more  absurd.  And  yet 
universal  suffrage  has  not  been  the  instru 
ment  of  greater  unwisdom  than  contrivances 
of  a  more  select  description.  Assemblies 
could  be  mentioned  composed  entirely  of 
Masters  of  Arts  and  Doctors  in  Divinity 
which  have  sometimes  shown  traces  of  hu 
man  passion  or  prejudice  in  their  votes. 
Have  the  Serene  Highnesses  and  Enlight 
ened  Classes  carried  on  the  business  of  Man 
kind  so  well,  then,  that  there  is  no  use  in  try 
ing  a  less  costly  method  ?  The  democratic 
theory  is  that  those  Constitutions  are  likely 
to  prove  steadiest  which  have  the  broadest 
base,  that  the  right  to  vote  makes  a  safety- 
valve  of  every  voter,  and  that  the  best  way 
of  teaching  a  man  how  to  vote  is  to  give  him 
the  chance  of  practice.  For  the  question  is 
no  longer  the  academic  one,  "  Is  it  wise  to 
give  every  man  the  ballot?  "  but  rather  the 
practical  one,  "  Is  it  prudent  to  deprive 
whole  classes  of  it  any  longer  ?  "  It  may 
be  conjectured  that  it  is  cheaper  in  the  long 
run  to  lift  men  up  than  to  hold  them  down, 
and  that  the  ballot  in  their  hands  is  less 
dangerous  to  society  than  a  sense  of  wrong 
in  their  heads.  At  any  rate  this  is  the  di- 


32  DEMOCRACY. 

lemma  to  which  the  drift  of  opinion  has  been 
for  some  time  sweeping  us,  and  in  politics  a 
dilemma  is  a  more  unmanageable  thing  to 
hold  by  the  horns  than  a  wolf  by  the  ears. 
It  is  said  that  the  right  of  suffrage  is  not 
valued  when  it  is  indiscriminately  bestowed, 
and  there  may  be  some  truth  in  this,  for 
I  have  observed  that  what  men  prize  most 
is  a  privilege,  even  if  it  be  that  of  chief 
mourner  at  a  funeral.  But  is  there  not  dan 
ger  that  it  will  be  valued  at  more  than  its 
worth  if  denied,  and  that  some  illegitimate 
way  will  be  sought  to  make  up  for  the  want 
of  it  ?  Men  who  have  a  voice  in  public  af 
fairs  are  at  once  affiliated  with  one  or  other 
of  the  great  parties  between  which  society  is 
divided,  merge  their  individual  hopes  and 
opinions  in  its  safer,  because  more  general 
ized,  hopes  and  opinions,  are  disciplined  by 
its  tactics,  and  acquire,  to  a  certain  degree, 
the  orderly  qualities  of  an  army.  They  no 
longer  belong  to  a  class,  but  to  a  body  cor 
porate.  Of  one  thing,  at  least,  we  may  be 
certain,  that,  under  whatever  method  of  help 
ing  things  to  go  wrong  man's  wit  can  con 
trive,  those  who  have  the  divine  right  to  gov 
ern  will  be  found  to  govern  in  the  end,  and 
that  the  highest  privilege  to  which  the  ma- 


DEMOCRACY.  33 

jority  of  mankind  can  aspire  is  that  of  being 
governed  by  those  wiser  than  they.  Uni 
versal  suffrage  has  in  the  United  States 
sometimes  been  made  the  instrument  of  in 
considerate  changes,  under  the  notion  of  re 
form,  and  this  from  a  misconception  of  the 
true  meaning  of  popular  government.  One 
of  these  has  been  the  substitution  in  many 
of  the  States  of  popular  election  for  official 
selection  in  the  choice  of  judges.  The  same 
system  applied  to  military  officers  was  the 
source  of  much  evil  during  our  civil  war, 
and,  I  believe,  had  to  be  abandoned.  But 
it  has  been  also  true  that  on  all  great  ques 
tions  of  national  policy  a  reserve  of  prudence 
and  discretion  has  been  brought  out  at  the 
critical  moment  to  turn  the  scale  in  favor  of 
a  wiser  decision.  An  appeal  to  the  reason 
of  the  people  has  never  been  known  to  fail 
in  the  long  run.  It  is,  perhaps,  true  that, 
by  effacing  the  principle  of  passive  obedi 
ence,  democracy,  ill  understood,  has  slack 
ened  the  spring  of  that  ductility  to  discipline 
which  is  essential  to  "  the  unity  and  married 
calm  of  States."  But  I  feel  assured  that  ex 
perience  and  necessity  will  cure  this  evil,  as 
they  have  shown  their  power  to  cure  others. 
And  under  what  frame  of  policy  have  evils 


34  DEMOCRACY. 

ever  been  remedied  till  they  became  intoler 
able,  and  shook  men  out  of  their  indolent 
indifference  through  their  fears  ? 

We  are  told  that  the  inevitable  result  of 
democracy  is  to  sap  the  foundations  of  per 
sonal  independence,  to  weaken  the  principle 
of  authority,  to  lessen  the  respect  due  to  em 
inence,  whether  in  station,  virtue,  or  genius. 
If  these  things  were  so,  society  could  not 
hold  together.  Perhaps  the  best  forcing- 
house  of  robust  individuality  would  be  where 
public  opinion  is  inclined  to  be  most  over 
bearing,  as  he  must  be  of  heroic  temper  who 
should  walk  along  Piccadilly  at  the  height 
of  the  Season  in  a  soft  hat.  As  for  author 
ity,  it  is  one  of  the  symptoms  of  the  time 
that  the  religious  reverence  for  it  is  declining 
everywhere,  but  this  is  due  partly  to  the  fact 
that  statecraft  is  no  longer  looked  upon  as 
a  mystery,  but  as  a  business,  and  partly  to 
the  decay  of  superstition,  by  which  I  mean 
the  habit  of  respecting  what  we  are  told  to 
respect  rather  than  what  is  respectable  in 
itself.  There  is  more  rough  and  tumble  in 
the  American  democracy  than  is  altogether 
agreeable  to  people  of  sensitive  nerves  and 
refined  habits,  and  the  people  take  their  po 
litical  duties  lightly  and  laughingly,  as  is, 


DEMOCRACY.  35 

perhaps,  neither  unnatural  nor  unbecoming 
in  a  young  giant.  Democracies  can  no 
more  jump  away  from  their  own  shadows 
than  the  rest  of  us  can.  They  no  doubt 
sometimes  make  mistakes  and  pay  honor  to 
men  who  do  not  deserve  it.  But  they  do 
this  because  they  believe  them  worthy  of  it, 
and  though  it  be  true  that  the  idol  is  the 
measure  of  the  worshipper,  yet  the  worship 
has  in  it  the  germ  of  a  nobler  religion.  But 
is  it  democracies  alone  that  fall  into  these 
errors  ?  I,  who  have  seen  it  proposed  to  erect 
a  statue  to  Hudson,  the  railway  king,  and 
have  heard  Louis  Napoleon  hailed  as  the 
saviour  of  society  by  men  who  certainly  had 
no  democratic  associations  or  leanings,  am 
not  ready  to  think  so.  But  democracies 
have  likewise  their  finer  instincts.  I  have 
also  seen  the  wisest  statesman  and  most 
pregnant  speaker  of  our  generation,  a  man 
of  bumble  birth  and  ungainly  manners,  of 
little  culture  beyond  what  his  own  genius 
supplied,  become  more  absolute  in  power 
than  any  monarch  of  modern  times  through 
the  reverence  of  his  countrymen  for  his  hon 
esty,  his  wisdom,  his  sincerity,  his  faith  in 
God  and  man,  and  the  nobly  humane  sim 
plicity  of  his  character.  And  I  remember 


36  DEMOCRACY. 

another  whom  popular  respect  enveloped  as 
with  a  halo,  the  least  vulgar  of  men,  the 
most  austerely  genial,  and  the  most  inde 
pendent  of  opinion.  Wherever  he  went  he 
never  met  a  stranger,  but  everywhere  neigh 
bors  and  friends  proud  of  him  as  their  or 
nament  and  decoration.  Institutions  which 
could  bear  and  breed  such  men  as  Lincoln 
and  Emerson  had  surely  some  energy  for 
good.  No,  amid  all  the  fruitless  turmoil  and 
miscarriage  of  the  world,  if  there  be  one 
thing  steadfast  and  of  favorable  omen,  one 
thing  to  make  optimism  distrust  its  own  ob 
scure  distrust,  it  is  the  rooted  instinct  in 
men  to  admire  what  is  better  and  more  beau 
tiful  than  themselves.  The  touchstone  of 
political  and  social  institutions  is  their  abil 
ity  to  supply  them  with  worthy  objects  of 
this  sentiment,  which  is  the  very  tap-root  of 
civilization  and  progress.  There  would 
seem  to  be  no  readier  way  of  feeding  it  with 
the  elements  of  growth  and  vigor  than  such 
an  organization  of  society  as  will  enable  men 
to  respect  themselves,  and  so  to  justify  them 
in  respecting  others. 

Such  a  result  is  quite  possible  under  other 
conditions  than  those  of  an  avowedly  demo- 
cratical  Constitution.  For  I  take  it  that  the 


DEMOCRACY.  37 

real  essence  of  democracy  was  fairly  enough 
defined  by  the  First  Napoleon  when  he  said 
that  the  French  Revolution  meant  "  la  car- 
riere  ouverte  aux  talents  "  —  a  clear  path 
way  for  merit  of  whatever  kind.  I  should 
be  inclined  to  paraphrase  this  by  calling  de 
mocracy  that  form  of  society,  no  matter  what 
its  political  classification,  in  which  every  man 
had  a  chance  and  knew  that  he  had  it.  If 
a  man  can  climb,  and  feels  himself  encour 
aged  to  climb,  from  a  coalpit  to  the  highest 
position  for  which  he  is  fitted,  he  can  well 
afford  to  be  indifferent  what  name  is  given 
to  the  government  under  which  he  lives. 
The  Bailli  of  Mirabeau,  uncle  of  the  more 
famous  tribune  of  that  name,  wrote  in  1771 : 
"  The  English  are,  in  my  opinion,  a  hundred 
times  more  agitated  and  more  unfortunate 
than  the  very  Algerines  themselves,  because 
they  do  not  know  and  will  not  know  till 
the  destruction  of  their  over-swollen  power, 
which  I  believe  very  near,  whether  they  are 
monarchy,  aristocracy,  or  democracy,  and 
wish  to  play  the  part  of  all  three."  Eng 
land  has  not  been  obliging  enough  to  fulfil 
the  Bailli's  prophecy,  and  perhaps  it  was 
this  very  carelessness  about  the  name,  and 
concern  about  the  substance  of  popular  gov- 


38  DEMOCRACY. 

ernment,  this  skill  in  getting  the  best  out  of 
things  as  they  are,  in  utilizing  all  the  mo 
tives  which  influence  men,  and  in  giving  one 
direction  to  many  impulses,  that  has  been  a 
principal  factor  of  her  greatness  and  power. 
Perhaps  it  is  fortunate  to  have  an  unwritten 
Constitution,  for  men  are  prone  to  be  tinker 
ing  the  work  of  their  own  hands,  whereas 
they  are  more  willing  to  let  time  and  circum 
stance  mend  or  modify  what  time  and  cir 
cumstance  have  made.  All  free  govern 
ments,  whatever  their  name,  are  in  reality 
governments  by  public  opinion,  and  it  is  on 
the  quality  of  this  public  opinion  that  their 
prosperity  depends.  It  is,  therefore,  their 
first  duty  to  purify  the  element  from  which 
they  draw  the  breath  of  life.  With  the 
growth  of  democracy  grows  also  the  fear,  if 
not  the  danger,  that  this  atmosphere  may  be 
corrupted  with  poisonous  exhalations  from 
lower  and  more  malarious  levels,  and  the 
question  of  sanitation  becomes  more  instant 
and  pressing.  Democracy  in  its  best  sense 
is  merely  the  letting  in  of  light  and  air. 
Lord  Sherbrooke,  with  his  usual  epigram 
matic  terseness,  bids  you  educate  your  future 
rulers.  But  would  this  alone  be  a  sufficient 
safeguard?  To  educate  the  intelligence  is 


DEMOCRACY.  39 

to  enlarge  the  horizon  of  its  desires  and 
wants.  And  it  is  well  that  this  should  be 
so.  But  the  enterprise  must  go  deeper  and 
prepare  the  way  for  satisfying  those  desires 
and  wants  in  so  far  as  they  are  legitimate. 
What  is  really  ominous  of  danger  to  the 
existing  order  of  things  is  not  democracy 
(which,  properly  understood,  is  a  conserva 
tive  force),  but  the  Socialism,  which  may  find 
a  fulcrum  in  it.  If  we  cannot  equalize  con 
ditions  and  fortunes  any  more  than  we  can 
equalize  the  brains  of  men  —  and  a  very 
sagacious  person  has  said  that  "  where  two 
men  ride  of  a  horse  one  must  ride  behind  " 
—  we  can  yet,  perhaps,  do  something  to  cor 
rect  those  methods  and  influences  that  lead 
to  enormous  inequalities,  and  to  prevent  their 
growing  more  enormous.  It  is  all  very  well 
to  pooh-pooh  Mr.  George  and  to  prove  him 
mistaken  in  his  political  economy.  I  do  not 
believe  that  land  should  be  divided  because 
the  quantity  of  it  is  limited  by  nature.  Of 
what  may  this  not  be  said  ?  A  fortiori,  we 
might  on  the  same  principle  insist  on  a  divi 
sion  of  human  wit,  for  I  have  observed  that 
the  quantity  of  this  has  been  even  more 
inconveniently  limited.  Mr.  George  himself 
has  an  inequitably  large  share  of  it.  But  he 


40  DEMOCRACY. 

is  right  in  his  impelling  motive  ;  right,  also, 
I  am  convinced,  in  insisting  that  humanity 
makes  a  part,  by  far  the  most  important 
part,  of  political  economy;  and  in  thinking 
man  to  be  of  more  concern  and  more  con 
vincing  than  the  longest  columns  of  figures 
in  the  world.  For  unless  you  include  hu 
man  nature  in  your  addition,  your  total  is 
sure  to  be  wrong  and  your  deductions  from 
it  fallacious.  Communism  means  barba 
rism,  but  Socialism  means,  or  wishes  to  mean, 
cooperation  and  community  of  interests,  sym 
pathy,  the  giving  to  the  hands  not  so  large 
a  share  as  to  the  brains,  but  a  larger  share 
than  hitherto  in  the  wealth  they  must  com 
bine  to  produce  —  means,  in  short,  the  prac 
tical  application  of  Christianity  to  life,  and 
has  in  it  the  secret  of  an  orderly  and  benign 
reconstruction.  State  Socialism  would  cut 
off  the  very  roots  in  personal  character  — 
self-help,  forethought,  and  frugality  —  which 
nourish  and  sustain  the  trunk  and  branches 
of  every  vigorous  Commonwealth. 

I  do  not  believe  in  violent  changes,  nor  do 
I  expect  them.  Things  in  possession  have 
a  very  firm  grip.  One  of  the  strongest 
cements  of  society  is  the  conviction  of  man 
kind  that  the  state  of  things  into  which  they 


DEMOCRACY.  41 

are  born  is  a  part  of  the  order  of  the  uni 
verse,  as  natural,  let  us  say,  as  that  the  sun 
should  go  round  the  earth.  It  is  a  convic 
tion  that  they  will  not  surrender  except  on 
compulsion,  and  a  wise  society  should  look 
to  it  that  this  compulsion  be  not  put  upon 
them.  For  the  individual  man  there  is  no 
radical  cure,  outside  of  human  nature  itself, 
for  the  evils  to  which  human  nature  is  heir. 
The  rule  will  always  hold  good  that  you 
must 

Be  your  own  palace  or  the  world 's  your  gaol. 

But  for  artificial  evils,  for  evils  that  spring 
from  want  of  thought,  thought  must  find  a 
remedy  somewhere.  There  has  been  no  pe 
riod  of  time  in  which  wealth  has  been  more 
sensible  of  its  duties  than  now.  It  builds 
hospitals,  it  establishes  missions  among  the 
poor,  it  endows  schools.  It  is  one  of  the 
advantages  of  accumulated  wealth,  and  of 
the  leisure  it  renders  possible,  that  people 
have  time  to  think  of  the  wants  and  sorrows 
of  their  fellows.  But  all  these  remedies  are 
partial  and  palliative  merely.  It  is  as  if  we 
should  apply  plasters  to  a  single  pustule  of 
the  small-pox  with  a  view  of  driving  out  the 
disease.  The  true  way  is  to  discover  and  to 
extirpate  the  germs.  As  society  is  now  con- 


42  DEMOCRACY. 

stituted  these  are  in  the  air  it  breathes,  in 
the  water  it  drinks,  in  things  that  seem,  and 
which  it  has  always  believed,  to  be  the  most 
innocent  and  healthful.  The  evil  elements 
it  neglects  corrupt  these  in  their  springs  and 
pollute  them  in  their  courses.  Let  us  be  of 
good  cheer,  however,  remembering  that  the 
misfortunes  hardest  to  bear  are  those  which 
never  come.  The  world  has  outlived  much, 
and  will  outlive  a  great  deal  more,  and  men 
have  contrived  to  be  happy  in  it.  It  has 
shown  the  strength  of  its  constitution  in 
nothing  more  than  in  surviving  the  quack 
medicines  it  has  tried.  In  the  scales  of  the 
destinies  brawn  will  never  weigh  so  much  as 
brain.  Our  healing  is  not  in  the  storm  or  in 
the  whirlwind,  it  is  not  in  monarchies,  or 
aristocracies,  or  democracies,  but  will  be  re 
vealed  by  the  still  small  voice  that  speaks  to 
the  conscience  and  the  heart,  prompting  us 
to  a  wider  and  wiser  humanity. 


GARFIELD. 


SPOKEN  ON  THE  DEATH  OF  PRESIDENT  GARFIELD  AT 

THE  MEMORIAL  MEETING  IN  EXETER  HALL, 

LONDON,  24  SEPTEMBER,  1881. 


GARFIELD. 


INTRODUCTORY  NOTE.* 

ONE  thing  and  one  only  makes  the  record  of 
the  meeting  at  Exeter  Hall  on  the  24th  Septem 
ber  worthy  of  separate  publication,  and  confers 
on  it  a  certain  distinction.  Not  what  was  said, 
but  where  it  was  said,  in  unison  with  what  other 
voices,  and  in  what  atmosphere  of  sympathy,  as 
spontaneous  as  it  was  universal,  gives  to  the 
words  spoken  here  their  true  point  and  emphasis. 
Never  before  have  Americans,  speaking  in  Eng 
land,  felt  so  clearly  that  they  were  in  the  land, 
not  only  of  their  fathers,  but  of  their  brethren, 

Their  elder  brothers,  but  one  in  blood. 

For  the  first  time  their  common  English  tongue 
found  its  true  office  when  Mother  and  Daughter 
spoke  comforting  words  to  each  other  over  a  sor 
row,  which,  if  nearer  to  one,  was  shared  by  both. 
English  blood,  made  up  of  the  best  drops  from 

1  Printed  first  as  a  preface  to  the  memorial  volume, 
containing  a  record  of  the  proceedings  at  the  Exeter  Hall 
meeting. 


46  GARFIELD. 

the  veins  of  many  conquering,  organizing,  and 
colonizing  races,  is  a  blood  to  be  proud  of,  and 
most  plainly  vindicates  its  claim  to  dominion 
when  it  recognizes  kinship  through  sympathy 
with  what  is  simple,  steadfast,  and  religious  in 
character.  When  we  learn  to  respect  each  other 
for  the  good  qualities  in  each,  we  are  helping  to 
produce  and  foster  them. 

It  is  often  said  that  sentimental  motives  never 
guide  or  modify  the  policy  of  nations,  and  it  is 
no  doubt  true  that  statecraft  more  and  more 
means  business,  and  not  sentiment ;  yet  men  as 
old  as  the  late  Lord  Stratford  de  Redcliffe  could 
remember  at  least  two  occasions  during  their 
lives  when  a  sentiment,  and  that,  too,  a  literary 
sentiment,  had  much  to  do  with  the  shaping  of 
events  and  the  new  birth  of  nations.  We  would 
not  over-estimate  the  permanent  value  of  this  out 
burst  of  feeling  on  both  sides  the  sea,  of  this 
grasp  of  the  hand  across  a  recent  grave,  but  we 
may  safely  affirm  that  they  were  genuine,  and 
had,  therefore,  something  of  the  enduring  virtue 
that  belongs  to  what  is  genuine,  and  to  that  only. 
It  is  something  that  two  great  nations  have 
looked  at  each  other  kindly  through  their  tears. 
It  will  at  least  be  more  awkward  to  quarrel  here 
after.  The  sight  of  the  British  flag  at  half-mast 
on  the  day  of  an  American  funeral  was  something 
to  set  men  thinking,  and  that  fruitfully,  of  the 
great  duty  that  is  laid  upon  the  English  race 


GARFIELD.  47 

among  mankind.  Well  may  we  be  proud  of  the 
Ancient  Mother,  and  we  will  see  to  it  that  she 
have  no  reason  to  be  ashamed  of  her  children. 

It  behoves  us  Americans  who  have  experienced 
nothing  but  the  kindness  and  hospitality  and 
sympathy  of  England,  to  express  thus  publicly 
our  sense  of  them.  Especially  would  we  thank 
the  venerable  prelate  whose  address  we  are  per 
mitted  to  include  in  this  little  volume.  And  em 
phatically  would  we  express  our  conviction  that 
the  wreath  sent  with  such  touching  delicacy  of 
feeling  by  her  Majesty  the  Queen  to  be  laid  upon 
the  bier  of  President  Garfield,  will  be  hung  upon 
a  golden  nail  in  the  Temple  of  Concord. 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen,  Countrymen  and 
Countrywomen,  —  The  object  of  this  meet 
ing,  as  you  all  know,  is  to  testify  our  respect 
for  the  character  and  services  of  the  late 
President  Garfield,  and  in  so  doing  to  offer 
such  consolation  as  is  possible  to  a  noble 
mother  and  a  noble  wife,  suffering  as  few 
women  have  been  called  upon  to  suffer.  It 
may  seem  a  paradox,  but  the  only  alleviation 
of  such  grief  is  a  sense  of  the  greatness  and 
costliness  of  the  sacrifice  that  gave  birth  to 
it,  and  this  sense  is  brought  home  to  us  by 
the  measure  in  which  others  appreciate  our 
loss.  It  is  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  the 


48  GARFIELD. 

recent  profoundly  touching  spectacle  of  wo 
manly  devotedness  in  its  simplicity,  its  con 
stancy,  and  its  dignity  has  moved  the  heart 
of  mankind  in  a  manner  without  any  pre 
cedent  in  living  memory.  But  to  Americans 
everywhere  it  comes  home  with  a  pang  of 
mingled  sorrow,  pride,  and  unspeakable  do 
mestic  tenderness  that  none  but  ourselves 
can  feel.  This  pang  is  made  more  poignant 
by  exile,  and  yet  you  will  all  agree  with  me 
in  feeling  that  the  universal  sympathy  ex 
pressed  here  by  all  classes  and  conditions  of 
men  has  made  us  sensible  as  never  before, 
that,  if  we  are  in  a  strange,  we  are  not  in  a 
foreign  land,  and  that  if  we  are  not  at  home 
we  are  at  least  in  what  Hawthorne  so  aptly 
called  the  Old  Home.  I  should  gladly  dwell 
more  at  length  upon  this  fact,  so  consoling 
and  so  full  of  all  good  omen,  but  I  must 
not  infringe  on  the  resolutions  which  will  be 
presented  to  you  by  others.  Yet  I  should 
do  injustice  to  your  feelings,  no  less  than  to 
my  own,  if  I  did  not  offer  here  our  grateful 
acknowledgments  to  the  august  lady  who, 
herself  not  unacquainted  with  grief,  has 
shown  so  repeatedly  and  so  touchingly  how 
true  a  woman's  heart  may  beat  under  the 
royal  purple. 


GARFIELD.  49 

On  an  occasion  like  this,  when  we  are  met 
together  that  we  may  give  vent  to  a  common 
feeling  so  deep  and  so  earnest  as  to  thrust 
aside  every  consideration  of  self,  the  wish  of 
us  all  must  be  that  what  is  said  here  should 
be  simple,  strong,  and  manly  as  the  charac 
ter  of  the  illustrious  magistrate  so  untimely 
snatched  from  us  in  the  very  seed-time  of 
noble  purpose,  that  would  have  sprung  up  in 
service  as  noble,  —  that  we  should  be  as  ten 
der  and  true  as  she  has  shown  herself  to  be 
in  whose  bereavement  we  reverently  claim 
to  share  as  children  of  the  blessed  country 
that  gave  birth  to  him  and  to  her.  We  can 
not  find  words  that  could  reach  that  lofty 
level.  This  is  no  place  for  the  turnings  and 
windings  of  dexterous  rhetoric.  In  the 
presence  of  that  death-scene  so  homely,  so 
human,  so  august  in  its  unostentatious  hero 
ism,  the  commonplaces  of  ordinary  eulogy 
stammer  with  the  sudden  shame  of  their  own 
ineptitude.  Were  we  allowed  to  follow  the 
natural  promptings  of  our  hearts,  we  would 
sum  up  all  praise  in  the  sacred  old  words, 
"Well  done,  thou  good  and  faithful  ser 
vant." 

That  death-scene  was  more  than  singular ; 
it  was  unexampled.  The  whole  civilized 


50  GARFIELD. 

world  was  gathered  about  it  in  the  breath 
less  suspense  of  anxious  solicitude,  listened 
to  the  difficult  breathing,  counted  the  flut 
tering  pulse,  was  cheered  by  the  momentary 
rally  and  saddened  by  the  inevitable  relapse. 
And  let  us  thank  God  and  take  courage 
when  we  reflect  that  it  was  through  the  man 
liness,  the  patience,  the  religious  fortitude 
of  the  splendid  victim  that  the  tie  of  human 
brotherhood  was  thrilled  to  a  consciousness 
of  its  sacred  function.  The  one  touch  of 
nature  that  makes  the  whole  world  kin  is  a 
touch  of  heroism,  our  sympathy  with  which 
dignifies  and  ennobles.  Science  has  wrought 
no  greater  marvel  in  the  service  of  human 
ity  than  when  it  gave  the  world  a  common 
nervous  system,  and  thus  made  mankind 
capable  of  a  simultaneous  emotion. 

One  remarkable  feature  of  that  death- 
scene  was  the  imperturbable  good  nature  of 
the  sufferer.  This  has  been  sometimes  called 
a  peculiarly  American  quality,  —  a  weakness 
if  in  excess  or  misapplied,  but  beautiful  in 
its  own  genial  place,  as  there  and  then  it 
was.  General  Garfield  once  said  to  a  friend, 
"  They  tell  me  it  is  a  defect  of  my  character, 
but  I  cannot  hate  anybody."  Like  Socrates, 
he  seemed  good-humored  even  with  death, 


QARFIELD.  51 

though  there  have  been  few  men  from  whom 
death  has  ever  wrenched  a  fairer  heritage  of 
opportunity.  Physicians  tell  us  that  all  men 
die  well,  but  surely  he  was  no  ordinary  man 
who  could  die  well  daily  for  eleven  agonizing 
weeks,  and  of  whom  it  could  be  said  at 
last,  — 

He  nothing  common  did,  or  mean, 

Upon  that  memorable  scene. 

A  fibre  capable  of  such  strain  and  wear  as 
that  is  used  only  in  the  making  of  heroic 
natures.  Twenty  years  ago  General  Garfield 
offered  his  life  to  his  country,  and  he  has 
died  for  her  as  truly  and  more  fruitfully  now 
than  if  fate  had  accepted  the  offer  then. 
Not  only  has  his  blood  re-cemented  our 
Union,  but  the  dignity,  the  patience,  the 
self-restraint,  the  though tfulness  for  others, 
the  serene  valor  which  he  showed  under  cir 
cumstances  so  disheartening  and  amid  the 
wreck  of  hopes  so  splendid,  are  a  possession 
and  a  stimulus  to  his  countrymen  forever. 
The  emulation  of  examples  like  his  makes 
nations  great,  and  keeps  them  so.  The  soil 
out  of  which  such  men  as  he  are  made  is 
good  to  be  born  on,  good  to  live  on,  good  to 
die  for  and  to  be  buried  in. 

I  had  not  the  honor  of  any  intimacy  of 


52  GARFIELD. 

friendship  with  this  noble  man.  Others  will 
speak  of  him  from  more  intimate  knowledge. 
I  saw  him  once  or  twice  only,  but  so  deeply 
was  I  impressed  with  the  seriousness  and 
solidity  of  his  character,  with  his  eager  in 
terest  in  worthy  objects,  and  with  the  states 
manlike  furniture  of  his  mind,  that  when, 
many  years  afterwards,  he  was  nominated 
for  the  Presidency  I  rejoiced  in  the  wisdom 
of  the  selection,  and  found  in  my  memory  an 
image  of  him  clearer  than  that  of  any  man 
I  ever  met  of  whom  I  had  seen  so  little. 
And  I  may  add  that  I  have  never  known 
any  man  concerning  whom  a  loving  and  ad 
miring  testimony  was  so  uniform  from  men 
of  every  rank  and  character  who  had  known 
him. 

None  knew  him  but  to  love  him, 
None  named  him  but  to  praise. 

I  shall  not  retrace  the  story  of  his  life, 
but  there  is  nothing  that  occurs  to  me  so  per 
fect  in  its  completeness  since  the  Biblical 
story  of  Joseph.  The  poor  lad  who  at  thir 
teen  could  not  read  dies  at  fifty  the  tenant 
of  an  office  second  in  dignity  to  none  on 
earth,  and  the  world  mourns  his  loss  as  that 
of  a  personal  relative.  I  find  the  word 
coming  back  to  my  lips  in  spite  of  me,  "  He 


GARFIELD.  53 

was  so  human"  An  example  of  it  was  his 
kissing  his  venerable  mother  on  the  day  of 
his  inauguration.  It  was  criticised,  I  re 
member  hearing  at  the  time,  as  a  sin  against 
good  taste.  I  thought  then,  and  think  now, 
that  if  we  had  found  the  story  in  Plutarch 
we  should  have  thought  no  worse  of  the  hero 
of  it. 

It  was  this  pliability  of  his  to  the  impulse 
of  unconventional  feeling  that  endeared  him 
so  much  to  his  kind.  Among  the  many 
stories  that  have  been  sent  me,  illustrating 
the  sorrow  so  universally  felt  here,  none 
have  touched  me  so  much  as  these  two : 
An  old  gardener  said  to  his  mistress,  "  Oh, 
ma'am,  we  felt  somehow  as  if  he  belonged 
to  us  ;  "  and  in  a  little  village  on  the  coast, 
where  an  evangelist  held  nightly  services  on 
the  beach,  prayer  was  offered  regularly  for 
the  recovery  of  the  President,  the  weather- 
beaten  fishermen  who  stood  around  the 
preacher  with  bowed,  uncovered  heads  fer 
vently  responding,  "  Amen."  You  will  also 
be  interested  to  know  that  the  benevolent 
Sir  Moses  Montefiore,  now  in  his  ninety- 
seventh  year,  telegraphed  last  week  to  Pales 
tine  to  request  that  prayers  might  be  offered 
for  the  President  in  the  synagogues  of  the 


54  GARFIELD. 

four  holy  cities.  It  was  no  common  man 
who  could  call  forth,  and  justly  call  forth,  an 
emotion  so  universal,  an  interest  so  sincere 
and  so  humane. 

I  said  that  this  is  no  place  for  eulogy. 
They  who  deserve  eulogy  do  not  need  it,  and 
they  who  deserve  it  not  are  diminished  by 
it.  The  dead  at  least  can  bear  the  truth, 
and  have  a  right  to  that  highest  service  of 
human  speech.  We  are  not  called  upon 
here  to  define  Garfield's  place  among  the 
memorable  of  mankind.  A  great  man  is 
made  up  of  qualities  that  meet  or  make  great 
occasions.  We  may  surely  say  of  him  that 
the  great  qualities  were  there,  and  were  al 
ways  adequate  to  the  need,  although,  less 
fortunate  than  Lincoln,  his  career  was 
snapped  short  just  as  they  were  about  to  be 
tested  by  the  supreme  trial  of  creative  states 
manship.  We  believe  that  he  would  have 
stood  the  test,  and  we  have  good  reason  for 
our  faith.  For  this  is  certainly  true  of  him, 
that  a  life  more  strenuous,  a  life  of  more 
constantly  heightening  tendency  of  fulfil 
ment,  of  more  salutary  and  invigorating  ex 
ample,  has  not  been  lived  in  a  country  that 
is  rich  in  instances  of  such.  Well  may  we 
be  proud  of  him,  this  brother  of  ours,  recog- 


GARFIELD.  55 

nized  also  as  a  brother  wherever  men  honor 
what  is  praiseworthy  in  man.  Well  may 
we  thank  God  for  him,  and  love  more  the 
country  that  could  produce  and  appreciate 
him.  Well  may  we  sorrow  for  his  loss,  but 
not  as  those  without  hope.  Great  as  the  loss 
is  —  and  the  loss  of  faculties  trained  like  his 
is  the  hardest  of  all  to  replace  —  yet  we 
should  show  a  want  of  faith  in  our  country 
if  we  called  it  irreparable.  Three  times 
within  living  memory  has  the  Yice-President 
succeeded  to  the  presidential  function  with 
out  shock  to  our  system,  without  detriment 
to  our  national  honor,  and  without  check  to 
our  prosperity.  It  would  be  an  indignity  to 
discuss  here  the  character  of  him  who  is  now 
our  chief  magistrate,  and  who,  more  than 
any  one,  it  is  safe  to  say,  has  felt  the  pain 
of  this  blow.  But  there  is  no  indecorum  in 
saying  what  is  known  to  all,  that  he  is  a  gen 
tleman  of  culture,  of  admittedly  high  intelli 
gence,  of  unimpeachable  character,  of  proved 
administrative  ability,  and  that  he  enters  on 
his  high  duties  with  a  full  sense  of  what  such 
a  succession  implies.  I  am  not  one  of  those 
who  believe  that  democracy  any  more  than 
any  other  form  of  government  will  go  of 
itself.  I  am  not  a  believer  in  perpetual  mo- 


56  GARFIELD. 

tion  in  politics  any  more  than  in  mechanics, 
but,  in  common  with  all  of  you,  I  have  an 
imperturbable  faith  in  the  honesty,  the  intel 
ligence,  and  the  good  sense  of  the  American 
people,  and  in  the  destiny  of  the  American 
Republic. 


STANLEY. 


SPEECH  AT  THE  MEETING  IN  THE  CHAPTER  HOUSE  OF 

WESTMINSTER  ABBEY  IN  COMMEMORATION   OF 

DEAN  STANLEY,  13  DECEMBER,  1881. 


STANLEY. 


I  AM  very  glad  to  have  the  privilege  of 
uniting  in  this  tribute  to  the  memory  of  the 
remarkable  man  whose  loss  was  felt  as  a 
personal  bereavement  by  so  great  and  so  va 
rious  a  multitude  of  mourners,  and,  as  has 
been  so  well  said  by  his  successor,  a  multi 
tude  of  mourners  which  included  many  who 
had  never  seen  his  face.  I  feel  especially 
happy  because  it  seems  to  me  that  my  pres 
ence  here  is  an  augury  of  that  day,  which 
may  be  distant,  but  which  I  believe  will 
surely  come,  when  the  character  and  services 
of  every  eminent  man  of  the  British  race  in 
every  land,  under  whatever  distant  skies  he 
may  have  been  born,  shall  be  the  common 
possession  and  the  common  inheritance  and 
the  common  pride  of  every  branch  which  is 
sprung  from  our  ancestral  stem.  As  I  look 
round  upon  this  assembly,  I  feel  that  I  may 
almost  be  pardoned  if  I  apply  again  the  well- 
known  line,  — 


60  STANLEY. 

Si  monumentum  requiris,  circumspice. 

The  quality  and  the  character  of  this  meet 
ing  are  in  themselves  a  monument  and  a 
eulogy.  It  would  be  out  of  place  for  me  to 
attempt  any  characterization  of  Dean  Stan 
ley  in  the  presence  of  those  so  much  more 
fitted  than  myself  for  the  task ;  but  I  may 
be  allowed  to  say  a  few  words  from  the  point 
of  view  of  a  stranger.  I  remember,  on  the 
day  of  the  Dean's  funeral,  what  struck  me 
as  most  remarkable  was  seeing  all  ranks  and 
conditions  of  men  equalized,  all  differences 
of  creed  obliterated,  all  animosities  of  sect 
and  party  appeased  by  the  touch  of  that 
common  sympathy  in  sorrow.  The  news 
papers,  as  was  natural  and  proper,  remarked 
upon  the  number  of  distinguished  persons 
who  were  present.  To  me,  it  seemed  vastly 
more  touching  to  look  upon  the  number  of 
humble  and  undistinguished  persons,  who 
felt  that  their  daily  lives  had  lost  a  consola 
tion  and  their  hearts  a  neighbor  and  a  friend. 
If  I  were  to  put  in  one  word  what  struck 
me  as  perhaps  the  leading  characteristic  of 
Dean  Stanley,  and  what  made  him  so  dear 
to  many,  I  should  say  it  was  not  his  charity, 
though  his  charity  was  large,  —  for  charity 
has  in  it  sometimes,  perhaps  often,  a  savor 


STANLEY.  61 

of  superiority,  —  it  was  not  his  toleration, — 
for  toleration,  I  think,  is  apt  to  make  a  con 
cession  of  what  should  be  simply  recognized 
as  a  natural  right,  —  but  it  was  rather,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  the  wonderful  many-sidedness 
of  his  sympathies.  I  remember  my  friend 
Dr.  Holmes,  whose  name  I  am  sure  is 
known,  and  if  known  is  dear  to  most  of  you, 
called  my  attention  to  an  epitaph  in  the 
neighborhood  of  Boston,  in  New  England. 
It  recorded  the  name  and  date  of  the  death 
of  a  wife  and  mother,  and  then  added  sim 
ply,  "  She  was  so  pleasant."  That  always 
struck  me  in  Dean  Stanley.  I  think  no 
man  ever  lived  who  was  so  pleasant  to  so 
many  people.  We  visited  him  as  we  visit  a 
clearer  sky  and  a  warmer  climate.  In  think 
ing  of  this  meeting  this  morning,  I  was 
reminded  of  a  proverbial  phrase  which  we 
have  in  America,  and  which,  I  believe,  we 
carried  from  England :  we  apologize  for  the 
shortcomings  and  faults  of  our  fellow-beings 
by  saying,  "  There  is  a  great  deal  of  human 
nature  in  man."  I  think  the  one  leading 
characteristic  of  Dean  Stanley  —  and  I  say 
it  to  his  praise  —  was  the  amount  of  human 
nature  there  was  in  him.  So  sweet,  so  gra 
cious,  so  cheerful,  so  illuminating  was  it  that 


62  STANLEY. 

there  could  not  have  been  too  much  of  it. 
It  brought  him  nearer  to  all  mankind,  it 
recognized  and  called  out  the  humanity  that 
was  in  other  men.  His  sympathies  were  so 
wide  that  they  could  not  be  confined  by  the 
boundaries  of  the  land  in  which  he  was 
born:  they  crossed  the  channel  and  they 
crossed  the  ocean.  No  man  was  a  foreigner 
to  him,  far  less  any  American.  And,  in 
supporting  the  resolution,  I  should  be  in 
clined  to  make  only  one  amendment :  it 
would  be  to  propose  that  the  memorial,  in 
stead  of  being  national,  should  be  interna 
tional.  Since  I  came  into  the  room,  I  have 
heard  from  Sir  Rutherford  Alcock  that  he 
has  received  from  Boston,  through  the  hands 
of  Rev.  Phillips  Brooks,  a  friend  of  Dean 
Stanley,  a  contribution  of  ,£206  toward  the 
Stanley  Hall.  I  am  sure  I  am  not  pledging 
my  countrymen  to  too  much  when  I  say  that 
they  will  delight  to  share  in  this  tribute  to 
the  late  Dean.  And  England  has  lately 
given  them,  in  so  many  ways,  such  touching 
and  cordial  reasons  for  believing  that  they 
cannot  enter  as  strangers  to  any  sorrow  of 
hers,  that  I  am  sure  you  will  receive  most 
substantial  and  most  sympathetic  help  from 
your  kindred  people  on  the  other  side  of  the 


STANLEY.  63 

Atlantic,  with  whom  the  bonds  of  sympathy 
have  been  lately  drawn  more  close,  and  by 
nothing  more  strikingly  than  by  the  sympa 
thy  expressed,  sir,  by  your  Royal  Mother, 
in  a  way  which  touched  every  heart  on  the 
other  side  of  the  Atlantic,  and  has  called 
forth  repeated  expressions  of  gratitude.  It 
will  give  me  great  pleasure  to  do  all  I  can 
to  aid  the  enterprise  which  is  started  here 
to-day. 


FIELDING. 


ADDRESS  ON  UNVEILING  THE  BUST  OF  FIELDING,  DE 
LIVERED  AT  SHIRE  HALL,  TAUNTON,  SOMERSET 
SHIRE,  ENGLAND,  4  SEPTEMBER,  1883. 


FIELDING. 


I  SHOULD  have  preferred  that  this  office 
I  am  to  perform  to-day  had  fallen  to  another. 
Especially  does  it  seem  fitting  that  an  Eng 
lish  author  should  take  the  first  place  in  do 
ing  honor  to  the  most  thoroughly  English  of 
writers;  and  yet  there  is  something  very 
pleasant  to  me  in  thinking  that  my  presence 
here  to-day  bears  witness  to  the  union  of  our 
tongue  and  of  our  literary  traditions.  I 
seem  to  be  not  inappropriately  verifying  the 
prophecy  of  Samuel  Daniel  made  nearly 
three  centuries  ago :  — 

And  who  in  time  knows  whither  we  may  vent 
The  treasure  of  our  tongue,  to  what  strange  shores 

The  gain  of  our  best  glory  may  be  sent 
To  enrich  unknowing  nations  with  our  stores  ? 

What  worlds  in  the  yet  unformed  Occident 
May  come  refined  with  accents  that  are  ours  ? 

I  wish  that  I  could  hope  to  repay  some  part, 
however  small,  of  this  obligation  by  any 
accents  of  mine.  A  whisper  will  ever  and 


68  FIELDING. 

anon  make  itself  heard  by  the  inward  ear  of 
literary  men,  asking  the  importunate  ques 
tions,  "  Pray,  do  you  not  ascribe  a  rather 
disproportionate  relative  importance  to  the 
achievements  of  those  of  your  own  craft  ?  " 
and  "Does  not  genius  manifest  itself  in 
many  other  ways,  and  those  of  far  more 
practical  usefulness  to  mankind  ? "  No 
doubt  an  overestimate  of  ourselves  and  of 
our  own  doings  is  a  very  common  human 
failing,  as  we  are  all  ready  to  admit  when 
we  candidly  consider  our  neighbors,  and  yet 
the  world  is  led  by  a  true  instinct  to  agree 
with  us  in  assigning  to  works  of  imagination 
a  usefulness  higher  in  kind  than  any  other 
and  in  allowing  to  their  authors  a  certain 
right  of  sanctuary  in  our  affections,  within 
whose  limit  the  ordinary  writs  of  human 
censure  do  not  run ;  for  not  only  are  the 
most  vivid  sensations  of  which  our  moral 
and  intellectual  nature  is  capable  received 
through  the  imagination,  but  that  mysterious 
faculty,  in  its  loftiest  and  purest  exercise, 
rescues  us  from  our  narrow  personality,  and 
lifts  us  up  to  regions  of  serener  scope  and 
more  ideal  satisfaction.  It  cheats  us  with 
a  semblance  of  creative  power  that  seems 
almost  divine,  and  exhilarates  us  by  a  mo- 


FIELDING.  69 

mentary  enlargement  of  the  boundaries  of 
our  conscious  being,  as  if  we  had  been 
brought  into  some  nearer  relationship  with 
elemental  forces.  This  magic,  it  is  true,  is 
wrought  to  the  full  only  by  the  three  or  four 
great  poets,  and  by  them  only  in  their  finest 
and  most  emancipated  moments.  Well  may 
we  value  this  incomparable  gift ;  well  may 
we  delight  to  honor  the  men  who  were  its 
depositaries  and  instruments.  Homer  and 
2Eschylus,  and  Dante  and  Shakespeare, 
speak  to  us  as  to  their  contemporaries,  with 
an  authority  accumulated  by  all  the  years 
between  them  and  us,  and  with  a  voice 
whose  very  remoteness  makes  it  seem  more 
divinely  clear.  At  the  height  which  these 
men  were  sometimes  capable  of  reaching,  the 
processes  of  the  mind  seem  to  be  intuitive. 
But  sometimes  we  find  our  treasure  in  more 
earthen  vessels  ;  sometimes  this  wonder 
working  faculty  is  bestowed  upon  men 
whose  natural  and  congenial  element  is  the 
prose  of  cities  and  the  conventionalized  emo 
tion  of  that  artificial  life  which  we  are 
pleased  to  call  real.  Here  it  is  forced  to 
combine  itself  as  best  it  may  with  the  un 
derstanding,  and  it  attains  its  ends  —  such 
lower  ends  as  only  are  possible  —  through 


70  FIELDING. 

observation  and  slowly-hoarded  experience. 
Even  then,  though  it  may  have  lost  its  high 
est,  it  has  not  lost  all  its  charm  nor  all  the 
potency  of  its  sway ;  for  I  am  inclined  to 
think  that  it  is  some  form  or  other,  some  de 
gree  or  other,  of  this  vivid  a  vis  of  imagina 
tion  which  breaks  the  fetters  of  men's  self- 
consciousness  for  a  while,  and  enables  them 
to  play  with  their  faculties  instead  of  toil 
ing  with  them  — gives  them,  in  short,  an  in 
definably  delightful  something  that  we  call 
originality,  or,  when  it  addresses  itself  to 
artistic  creation,  genius.  A  certain  sacred- 
ness  was  once  attributed  to  the  builders  of 
bridges  and  makers  of  roads,  and  we  but 
follow  a  natural  and  praiseworthy  impulse 
when  we  cherish  the  memory  and  record  the 
worth  of  any  man  of  original  and  especially 
of  creative  mind,  since  it  is  the  office  of  such 
also  to  open  the  highway  for  our  fancy  and 
our  thought,  through  the  chiaroscuro  of  tan 
gled  actualities  in  which  we  dwell,  to  com 
merce  with  fresh  forms  of  nature  and  new 
varieties  of  man.  It  is  the  privilege  of  gen 
ius  that  to  it  life  never  grows  commonplace 
as  to  the  rest  of  us,  and  that  it  sees  Falstaffs 
or  Don  Quixotes  or  Squire  Westerns  where 
we  have  never  seen  anything  more  than  the 


FIELDING.  71 

ordinary  Toms  and  Dicks  and  Harries  whom 
an  inscrutable  Providence  has  seen  fit  to  send 
into  an  already  overpopulated  world.  These 
genius  takes  by  the  hand  and  leads  through 
a  maze  of  imaginary  adventures ;  exposes  to 
a  cross-play  of  fictitious  circumstances,  to  the 
friction  of  other  personages  as  unreal  as 
themselves,  and  we  exclaim  "  Why,  they 
are  alive  ;  this  is  creation  !  "  Yes,  genius 
has  endowed  them  with  a  fulness  of  life,  a 
completeness  of  being,  such  as  even  they 
themselves  had  never  dreamed  of,  and  they 
become  truly  citizens  of  the  world  forever. 
A  great  living  poet,  who  has  in  his  own 
work  illustrated  every  form  of  imagination, 
has  told  us  admirably  what  the  secret  of  this 
illusory  creativeness  is,  as  no  one  has  a  bet 
ter  right  to  know. 

I  find  first 

Writ  down  for  very  a  b  c  of  fact, 
In  the  beginning  God  made  heaven  and  earth, 
From  which,  no  matter  in  what  lisp,  I  spell 
And  speak  you  out  a  consequence  —  that  man  — 
Man,  as  befits  the  made,  the  inferior  thing1, 
Purposed  since  made  to  grow,  not  make  in  turn ; 
Yet  forced  to  try  and  make,  else  fail  to  grow, 
Formed  to  rise,  reach  at,  if  not  grasp  and  gain 
The  good  beyond  him  ;  which  attempt  is  growth  — 
Repeats  God's  process  in  man's  due  degree, 
A  harmony  man's  proportionate  result ; 
Creates  not,  but  resuscitates  perhaps. 


72  FIELDING. 

No  less  man,  bounded,  yearning1  to  be  free, 
May  so  project  his  surplusage  of  soul, 
In  search  of  body ;  so  add  self  to  self, 
By  owning1  what  lay  ownerless  before, 
So  find,  so  fill  full,  so  appropriate  forms. 
.  .   .  Though  nothing1  which  had  never  life, 
Shall  get  life  from  him,  be,  not  having  been, 
Yet  something  dead  may  get  to  live  again. 

Now  the  man  whom  we  are  met  to  com 
memorate  to-day  felt  this  necessity  and  per 
formed  this  feat,  and  his  works  are  become 
a  substantial  part  of  that  English  litera 
ture  which  may  be  said  not  merely  to  exist, 
but  to  live.  They  have  become  so,  among 
other  reasons,  because  he  had  the  courage  to 
be  absolutely  sincere,  if  he  had  not  always 
the  tact  to  see  where  sincerity  is  out  of  place. 
We  may  discuss,  we  may  estimate  him,  but 
we  cannot  push  him  from  his  place.  His 
imagination  was  of  that  secondary  order  of 
which  I  have  spoken,  subdued  to  what  it 
worked  in ;  and  his  creative  power  is  not 
less  in  degree  than  that  of  more  purely  ideal 
artists,  but  was  different  in  kind,  or,  if  not, 
is  made  to  seem  so  by  the  more  vulgar  sub 
stance  in  which  it  wrought.  He  was  inferior 
also  in  having  no  touch  of  tragic  power  or 
passion,  though  he  can  be  pathetic  when  he 
will.  There  is  nowhere  a  scene  more  pa- 


FIELDING.  73 

thetic  than  that  of  the  supper  Amelia  pre 
pares  for  Booth,  who  never  comes  to  share  it, 
and  it  is  pathos  made  of  materials  as  homely 
as  Wordsworth  himself  would  have  chosen. 
Certainly  Fielding's  genius  was  incapable  of 
that  ecstasy  of  conception  through  which  the 
poetic  imagination  seems  fused  into  a  molten 
unity  with  its  material,  and  produces  figures 
that  are  typical  without  loss  of  characteris 
tic  individuality,  as  if  they  were  drawn,  not 
from  what  we  call  real  life,  but  from  the 
very  source  of  life  itself,  and  were  cast  in 
that  universal  mould  about  which  the  subtlest 
thinkers  that  have  ever  lived  so  long  busied 
themselves.  Fielding's  characters  are  very 
real  persons ;  but  they  are  not  types  in  the 
same  sense  as  Lear  and  Hamlet.  They  seem 
to  be  men  whom  we  have  seen  rather  than 
men  whom  we  might  see  if  we  were  lucky 
enough  —  men  who  have  been  rather  than 
who  might  have  been.  He  was  especially  a 
humorist ;  and  the  weakness  of  the  humorist 
is  that  he  can  never  be  quite  unconscious, 
for  in  him  it  seems  as  if  the  two  lobes  of  the 
brain  were  never  in  perfect  unison,  so  that 
if  ever  one  of  them  be  on  the  point  of  sur 
rendering  itself  to  a  fine  frenzy  of  unquali 
fied  enthusiasm,  the  other  watches  it,  makes 


74  FIELDING. 

fun  of  it,  renders  it  uneasy  with  a  vague 
sense  of  absurd  incongruity,  till  at  last  it 
is  forced  to  laugh  when  it  had  rather  cry. 
Heine  turned  this  to  his  purpose,  and  this  is 
what  makes  him  so  profoundly,  and  yet 
sometimes  so  unpleasantly,  pathetic.  Shake 
speare,  as  remarkable  in  this,  perhaps,  as  in 
anything  else,  is  the  only  man  in  whom  the 
rarest  poetic  power  has  worked  side  by  side 
at  the  same  bench  with  humor,  and  has  not 
been  more  or  less  disenchanted  by  it.  I  have 
lingered  so  long  on  general  questions,  not 
because  I  feared  to  meet  more  directly  an 
objection  which  I  am  told  has  been  made  to 
this  tribute  of  respect  and  affection  for  Field 
ing,  but  because  I  doubted  whether  it  was 
necessary  or  wise  to  notice  it  at  all ;  and  yet, 
though  it  must  be  admitted  that  his  books 
cannot  be  recommended  virginibus  pueris- 
que,  I  will  say  frankly  that  it  is  not  because 
they  would  corrupt,  but  because  they  would 
shock ;  and  surely  this  need  not  affect  the 
fact  that  he  was  a  great  and  original  genius 
who  has  done  honor  to  his  country,  which  is 
what  we  chiefly  have  to  consider  here.  A 
gallery  of  Somersetshire  worthies  from  which 
he  was  absent  would  be  as  incomplete  as  a 
history  of  English  literature  that  should  not 
mention  him. 


FIELDING.  75 

Fielding  needs  no  recognition  from  us ;  his 
fame  is  established  and  admitted,  and  his 
character  is  gradually  clearing  itself  of  the 
stains  with  which  malice  or  jealousy  or  care 
less  hearsay  had  darkened  it.  It  has  become 
an  established  principle  of  criticism  that  in 
judging  a  man  we  must  take  into  account 
the  age  in  which  he  lived,  and  which  was  as 
truly  a  part  of  him  as  he  of  it.  Fielding's 
genius  has  drawn  forth  the  sympathetic  com 
mendation  of  such  widely  different  men  as 
Gibbon,  Scott,  Coleridge,  Thackeray,  and 
Leslie  Stephen,  and  of  such  a  woman  as 
George  Eliot.  I  possess  a  copy  of  "  Tom 
Jones,"  the  margins  of  which  are  crowded 
with  the  admiring  comments  of  Leigh  Hunt, 
as  pure-minded  a  man  as  ever  lived,  and  a 
critic  whose  subtlety  of  discrimination  and 
whose  soundness  of  judgment,  supported  as 
it  was  on  a  broad  base  of  truly  liberal  schol 
arship,  have  hardly  yet  won  fitting  apprecia 
tion.  There  can  be  no  higher  testimonials  to 
character  then  these ;  and  lately  Mr.  Austin 
Dobson  has  done,  perhaps,  as  true  a  service 
as  one  man  of  letters  ever  did  to  another  by 
reducing  what  little  is  known  of  the  life  of 
Fielding  from  chaos  to  coherence  by  ridding 
it  of  fable,  by  correcting  and  coordinating 


T6  FIELDING. 

dates,  by  cross-examining  tradition  till  it 
stamineringly  confessed  that  it  had  no  visible 
means  of  subsistence,  and  has  thus  enabled  us 
to  get  some  authentic  glimpse  of  the  man  as 
he  really  was.  He  has  rescued  the  body 
of  Fielding  from  beneath  the  swinish  hoofs 
which  were  trampling  it  as  once  they  tram 
pled  the  Knight  of  La  Mancha,  whom  Field 
ing  so  heartily  admired.  "We  really  know 
almost  as  little  of  Fielding's  life  as  of  Shake 
speare's,  but  what  we  do  know  on  any  valid 
evidence  is,  I  think,  on  the  whole,  highly 
creditable  to  him.  Thrown  upon  the  town 
at  twenty  with  no  training  that  would  fit  him 
for  a  profession,  with  the  principles  and 
tastes  of  the  class  to  which  he  belonged  by 
birth,  and  with  a  nominal  allowance  from 
his  father  of  £200  a  year,  which,  as  he  hu 
morously  said,  "  anybody  might  pay  that 
would,"  it  is  possible  that  when  he  had 
money  in  his  pocket  he  may  have  spent  it  in 
ways  that  he  might  blush  to  remember,  and 
when  his  pocket  was  empty  may  have  tried  to 
replenish  it  by  expedients  that  were  not  to 
his  taste.  But  there  is  no  proof  of  this  ex 
cept  what  is  purely  inferential,  and  there  is 
evidence  of  the  same  kind,  but  stronger,  that 
he  had  habits  of  study  and  industry  that  are 


FIELDING.  77 

not  to  be  put  on  at  will  as  one  puts  on  his 
overcoat,  and  that  are  altogether  inconsistent 
with  the  dissolute  life  he  is  supposed  to  have 
led.  The  dramatic  pieces  that  he  wrote  dur 
ing  his  early  period  were,  it  is  true,  shame 
fully  gross,  though  there  are  humorous  hints 
in  them  that  have  been  profitably  worked  up 
by  later  writers  ;  but  what  strikes  me  most  in 
them  is  that  there  is  so  little  real  knowledge 
of  life,  the  result  of  personal  experience,  and 
that  the  social  scenery  and  conception  of 
character  are  mainly  borrowed  from  his  im 
mediate  predecessors,  the  dramatists  of  the 
Restoration.  In  grossness  his  plays  could 
not  outdo  those  of  Dryden,  whose  bust  has 
stood  so  long  without  protest  in  Westmin 
ster  Abbey.  As  to  any  harm  they  can  do 
there  is  little  to  be  apprehended,  for  they 
are  mostly  as  hard  to  read  as  a  Shapira 
manuscript.  I  do  not  deny  that  Fielding's 
temperament  was  far  from  being  over  nice. 
I  am  willing  to  admit,  if  you  will,  that  the 
woof  of  his  nature  was  coarse  and  animal. 
I  should  not  stop  short  of  saying  that  it  was 
sensual.  Yet  he  liked  and  admired  the 
highest  and  best  things  of  his  time  —  the 
art  of  Hogarth,  the  acting  of  Garrick,  the 
verse  of  Pope.  He  is  said  indeed  to  have 


78  FIELDING. 

loved  low  company,  but  his  nature  was  so 
companionable  and  his  hunger  for  knowl 
edge  so  keen,  that  I  fancy  he  would  like  any 
society  that  was  not  dull,  and  any  conversa 
tion,  however  illiterate,  from  which  he  could 
learn  anything  to  his  purpose.  It  may  be 
suspected  that  the  polite  conversation  of  the 
men  of  that  day  would  differ  little,  except  in 
grammar,  from  the  talk  of  the  pothouse. 

As  I  have  said,  we  must  guard  against 
falling  into  the  anachronism  of  forgetting 
the  coarseness  of  the  age  into  which  he  was 
born,  and  whose  atmosphere  he  breathed. 
It  was  a  generation  whose  sense  of  smell  was 
undisturbed  by  odors  that  would  now  evoke 
a  sanitary  commission,  and  its  moral  nostrils 
were  of  an  equally  masculine  temper.  A 
coarse  thread  shows  itself  here  and  there, 
even  through  the  satiny  surface  of  the  fas 
tidious  Gray,  and  a  taint  of  the  century  that 
gave  him  birth  may  be  detected  now  and 
then  in  the  "  Doctor  "  of  the  pure  and  alto 
gether  admirable  Southey.  But  it  is  ob 
jected  that  there  is  an  immoral  tendency 
in  "  Joseph  Andrews,"  "  Tom  Jones,"  and 
"  Amelia." 

Certainly  none  of  them  is  calculated  to 
serve  the  cause  of  virtue,  or  at  any  rate,  of 


FIELDING.  79 

chastity,  if  measured  by  the  standard  of  to 
day.  But  as  certainly  that  standard  looks 
a  little  awkward  in  the  hands  of  people  who 
read  George  Sand  and  allow  an  expurgated 
edition  of  the  Decalogue  for  the  use  of  them 
that  go  in  chariots.  I  confess  that  in  my 
impatience  of  such  criticism  I  feel  myself 
tempted,  when  Fielding's  muse  shows  a  too 
liberal  ankle,  to  cry  out  with  Tarn  O'Shanter, 
"  Weel  dune,  cutty  sark !  "  His  bluntness 
is  more  wholesome  than  the  refinement  of 
such  critics,  for  the  second  of  the  Seven 
Deadly  Sins  is  not  less  dangerous  when  she 
talks  mysticism  and  ogles  us  through  the 
gaps  of  a  fan  painted  with  the  story  of  the 
Virgin  Martyr.  He  did  not  go  in  search  of 
impurity  as  if  he  relished  the  reek  of  it,  like 
some  French  so-called  realists  for  whose  title- 
pages  I  should  be  inclined  to  borrow  an  in 
scription  from  the  old  tavern-signs,  "  Enter 
tainment  for  Man  —  and  Beast."  He  painted 
vice  when  it  came  in  his  way  (and  it  was 
more  obvious  in  his  time)  as  a  figure  in  the 
social  landscape,  and  in  doing  so  he  was  per 
haps  a  better  moralist  than  those  who  ignore 
it  altogether,  or  only  when  it  lives  in  a  gen 
teel  quarter  of  the  town.  He  at  least  does 
not  paint  the  landscape  as  a  mere  background 


80  FIELDING. 

for  the  naked  nymph.  He  never  made  the 
blunder  of  supposing  that  the  Devil  always 
smelt  of  sulphur.  He  thought  himself  to  be 
writing  history,  and  called  his  novels  Histo 
ries,  as  if  to  warn  us  that  he  should  tell  the 
whole  truth  without  equivocation.  He  makes 
all  the  sins  of  his  heroes  react  disastrously 
on  their  fortunes.  He  assuredly  believed 
himself  to  be  writing  with  an  earnest  moral 
purpose  in  his  two  greater  and  more  delib 
erately  composed  works,  and  indeed  clearly 
asserts  as  much.  I  also  fully  believe  it,  for 
the  assertion  is  justified  by  all  that  we  know 
of  the  prevailing  qualities  of  his  character, 
whatever  may  have  been  its  failings  and 
lapses,  if  failings  and  lapses  they  were.  It 
does  not  seem  to  have  occurred  to  the  Eng 
lish  clergyman  who  wrote  the  epitaph  over 
his  grave  at  Lisbon  that  there  was  any 
question  about  the  matter,  and  he  especially 
celebrates  the  moral  purpose  and  effect  of 
Fielding's  works  in  Latin  that  would,  per 
haps,  have  made  the  subject  of  it  a  little  un 
comfortable.  How,  then,  are  we  to  explain 
certain  scenes  in  these  books,  except  by  sup 
posing  that  Fielding  was  utterly  unconscious 
that  there  was  any  harm  in  them?  Perhaps 
we  might  also  say  that  he  was  so  sincere  a 


FIELDING.  81 

hater  of  cant  and  sham  and  hypocrisy  that 
in  his  wrath  against  them  he  was  not  careful 
to  consider  the  want  of  ceremonious  decorum 
in  his  protest,  and  forgot  that  frankness 
might  stop  short  of  cynicism  without  losing 
any  of  its  virtue.  He  had  so  hearty  an  Eng 
lish  contempt  for  sentimentality  that  he  did 
not  always  distinguish  true  sentiment  from 
false,  and  setting  perhaps  an  over-value  on 
manliness,  looked  upon  refinement  as  the 
ornament  and  protection  of  womanly  weak 
ness  rather  than  as  what  it  quite  as  truly 
is  —  the  crown  and  complement  of  manly 
strength.  He  admired  Richardson,  and 
frankly  expressed  his  admiration ;  yet  I 
think  that  over  a  bowl  of  punch  he  might 
have  misnamed  him  the  "  Homer  of  Board 
ing-school  Misses,"  just  as  Sainte-Beuve 
called  Octave  Feuillet  the  "  Alfred  de  Mus- 
set  of  Boarding-schools." 

But  besides  all  this,  Fielding  was  a  natu 
ralist,  in  the  sense  that  he  was  an  instinctive 
and  careful  observer.  He  loved  truth,  and, 
for  an  artist,  seems  to  have  too  often  missed 
the  distinction  between  truth  and  exacti 
tude.  He  forgot  the  warning  of  Sir  Walter 
Raleigh,  perhaps  more  important  to  the 
artist  than  to  the  historian,  that  it  is  dan- 


82  FIELDING. 

gerous  to  follow  truth  too  near  the  heels. 
His  aim  was  to  paint  life  as  he  saw  it,  not 
as  he  wished  it  was  or  hoped  it  might  be ; 
to  show  us  what  men  really  did,  not  what 
they  were  pleased  to  believe  they  thought 
it  would  be  well  for  other  men  to  do :  and 
this  he  did  with  a  force,  a  directness,  and  a 
vividness  of  coloring  that  make  him  in  the 
truest  sense  a  painter  of  history.  No  one 
can  fail  to  admit  the  justice  of  the  analogy 
between  him  and  his  friend  Hogarth  in  this 
respect,  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Dobson.  In 
both  cases  we  may  regret  that  their  model 
was  too  often  no  better  than  she  should  be. 
In  the  case  both  of  Tom  Jones  and  of  Booth, 
it  is  to  be  noted,  so  far  as  the  moral  purpose 
is  concerned,  that  their  lapse  from  virtue  al 
ways  draws  after  them  a  retribution  which 
threatens  ruin  to  their  dearest  desires.  I 
think  it  was  Thackeray  who  said  that  Field 
ing  had  dared  to  paint  a  man  —  an  exploit 
for  which  no  one  would  have  the  courage 
now. 

This  is  not  the  place  or  occasion  for  a 
critical  estimate  of  Fielding,  even  could  one 
add  anything  of  value  to  what  has  been 
already  said  by  competent  persons.  If 
there  were  a  recognized  standard  in  criti- 


FIELDING.  83 

cism,  as  in  apothecaries'  measure,  so  that  by 
adding  a  grain  of  praise  to  this  scale,  or 
taking  away  a  scruple  of  blame  from  that, 
we  could  make  the  balance  manifestly  even 
in  the  eyes  of  all  men,  it  might  be  worth 
while  to  weigh  Hannibal ;  but  when  each  of 
us  stamps  his  own  weights,  and  warrants  the 
impartiality  of  his  own  scales,  perhaps  the 
experiment  may  be  wisely  foregone.  Let  it 
suffice  here  to  state  generally  the  reasons  for 
which  we  set  a  high  value  on  this  man  whose 
bust  we  unveil  to-day.  Since  we  are  come 
together,  not  to  judge,  but  only  to  commem 
orate,  perhaps  it  would  be  enough  to  say,  in 
justification  of  to-day's  ceremony,  that  Field 
ing  was  a  man  of  genius  ;  for  it  is  hardly 
once  in  a  century,  if  so  often,  that  a  whole 
country  catches  so  rare  and  shy  a  specimen 
of  the  native  fauna,  and  proportionably 
more  seldom  that  a  county  is  so  lucky.  But 
Fielding  was  something  more  even  than  this. 
It  is  not  extravagant  to  say  that  he  marks 
an  epoch,  and  that  we  date  from  him  the 
beginning  of  a  consciously  new  form  of  lit 
erature.  It  was  not  without  reason  that 
Byron,  expanding  a  hint  given  somewhere 
by  Fielding  himself,  called  him  "  the  prose 
Homer  of  human  nature."  He  had  more 


84  FIELDING. 

than  that  superficial  knowledge  of  literature 
which  no  gentleman's  head  should  be  with 
out.  He  knew  it  as  a  craftsman  knows  the 
niceties  and  traditions  of  his  craft.  He  saw 
that  since  the  epic  in  verse  ceased  to  be  re 
cited  in  the  market-places,  it  had  become  an 
anachronism ;  that  nothing  but  the  charrn  of 
narrative  had  saved  Ariosto,  as  Tasso  had 
been  saved  by  his  diction,  and  Milton  by  his 
style  ;  but  that  since  Milton  every  epic  had 
been  born  as  dead  as  the  Pharaohs  —  more 
dead,  if  possible,  than  the  "  Columbiad " 
of  Joel  Barlow  and  the  "  Charlemagne " 
of  Lucien  Bonaparte  are  to  us.  He  saw 
that  the  novel  of  actual  life  was  to  replace 
it,  and  he  set  himself  deliberately  (after 
having  convinced  himself  experimentally  in 
Parson  Adams  that  he  could  create  charac 
ter)  to  produce  an  epic  on  the  lower  and 
more  neighborly  level  of  prose.  However 
opinions  may  differ  as  to  the  other  merits 
of  "  Tom  Jones,"  they  are  unanimous  as  to 
its  harmony  of  design  and  masterliness  of 
structure. 

Fielding,  then,  was  not  merely,  in  my 
judgment  at  least,  an  original  writer,  but 
an  originator.  He  has  the  merit,  what 
ever  it  may  be,  of  inventing  the  realistic 


FIELDING.  85 

novel,  as  it  is  called.  I  do  not  mean  to  say 
that  there  had  been  no  stories  professedly  of 
real  life  before.  The  story  of  "  Francioii  " 
is  such,  and  even  more  notably  "  Gil  Bias," 
not  to  mention  others.  But  before  Fielding 
it  seems  to  me  that  real  life  formed  rather 
the  scenic  background  than  the  substance, 
and  that  the  characters  are,  after  all,  merely 
players  who  represent  certain  types  rather 
than  the  living  types  themselves.  Fielding, 
as  a  novelist,  drew  the  motives  that  im 
pel  his  characters  in  all  their  actions  from 
human  nature,  and  not  from  artificial  life. 
When  I  read  "  Gil  Bias,"  I  do  not  become 
part  of  the  story  —  I  listen  to  an  agreeable 
story-teller  who  narrates  and  describes,  and 
I  wait  to  hear  what  is  going  to  happen  ;  but 
in  Fielding  I  want  to  see  what  people  are 
going  to  do  and  say,  and  I  can  half  guess 
what  will  happen,  because  I  know  them  and 
what  they  are  and  what  they  are  likely  to 
do.  They  are  no  longer  images,  but  actual 
beings.  Nothing  can  persuade  me,  for  ex 
ample,  that  I  do  not  know  the  sound  of 
Squire  Western's  voice. 

Fielding  did  not  and  could  not  idealize, 
his  object  being  exact  truth,  but  he  realized 
the  actual  truth  around  him  as  none  had 


86  FIELDING. 

done  before  and  few  have  done  since.  As  a 
creator  of  characters  that  are  actuated  by  a 
motive  power  within  themselves,  and  that 
are  so  livingly  real  as  to  become  our  famil 
iar  acquaintances,  he  is  among  the  greatest. 
Abraham  Adams  is  excellent,  and  has  had  a 
numerous  progeny,  but  I  think  that  even  he 
is  inferior  in  originality,  in  coherence,  and 
in  the  entire  keeping  of  look,  speech,  motive, 
and  action,  to  Squire  Western,  who  is,  in 
deed,  one  of  the  most  simple  and  perfect 
creations  of  genius.  If  he  has  been  less 
often  copied  than  Parson  Adams,  may  it  not 
be  because  he  is  a  more  finished  work  of  art, 
and,  therefore,  more  difficult  to  copy  ?  I 
need  not  expatiate  on  the  simple  felicity  and 
courteousness  of  his  style,  the  unobtrusive 
clothing  of  a  thought  as  clear  as  it  is  often 
profound,  or  on  the  good-nature  of  his  satire, 
in  which  he  reminds  one  of  Chaucer,  or  on 
the  subtle  gravity  of  his  irony,  more  delicate 
than  that  of  Swift,  and,  therefore,  perhaps 
even  more  deadly.  I  will  only  say  that  I 
think  it  less  perfect,  because  more  obviously 
intentional,  in  "  Jonathan  Wild "  than  in 
such  masterpieces  as  the  account  of  Cap 
tain  BlifiTs  death,  and  the  epitaph  upon 
his  tomb.  When  it  seems  most  casual  and 


FIELDING.  87 

inadvertent,  it  often  cuts  deepest,  as  when 
Squire  Western,  impatient  of  Parson  Sup- 
pie's  intervention,  says  to  him,  "  Arn't  in 
pulpit  now  ;  when  art  a  got  up  there  then  I 
never  mind  what  dost  say."  I  must  not 
forget  to  say  a  word  of  his  dialogue,  which, 
except  where  he  wishes  to  show  off  his  at 
tainments  in  classical  criticism,  as  in  some 
chapters  of  "Amelia,"  is  altogether  so  ad 
mirably  spirited  and  characteristic  that  it 
makes  us  wonder  at  his  failure  as  a  dram 
atist.  We  may  read  Fielding's  character 
clearly  in  his  books,  for  it  was  not  complex, 
but  especially  in  his  "Voyage  to  Lisbon," 
where  he  reveals  it  in  artless  inadvertence. 
He  was  a  lovingly  thoughtful  husband,  a 
tender  father,  a  good  brother,  a  useful  and 
sagacious  magistrate.  He  was  courageous, 
gentle,  thoroughly  conscious  of  his  own  dig 
nity  as  a  gentleman,  and  able  to  make  that 
dignity  respected.  If  we  seek  for  a  single 
characteristic  which  more  than  any  other 
would  sum  him  up,  we  should  say  that  it 
was  his  absolute  manliness,  a  manliness  in 
its  type  English  from  top  to  toe.  It  is  emi 
nently  fitting,  therefore,  that  the  reproduc 
tion  of  his  features,  which  I  am  about  to 
unveil,  should  be  from  the  hand  of  a  woman. 


88  FIELDING. 

Let  me  close  with  a  quotation  which  was  a 
favorite  with  Fielding :  — 

Verum  ubi  plura  nitent,   .  .   .  non  ego  paucis 
Offendar  maculis,  quas  aut  incuria  fudit, 
Aut  humana  parum  cavit  natura. 


COLERIDGE. 


ADDRESS  ON  UNVEILING  THE  BUST  OF  COLERIDGE, 
IN  WESTMINSTER  ABBEY,  7  MAY,  1885. 


COLERIDGE. 


I  SHOULD  have  preferred  for  many  rea 
sons,  on  which  I  need  not  dwell,  for  they 
must  be  present  to  the  minds  of  all  who  hear 
me,  that  the  duty  I  have  undertaken  to  per 
form  here  to-day  had  fallen  to  other  hands. 
But  the  fact  that  this  memorial  of  one  who, 
if  not  a  great  poet  and  a  great  teacher,  had 
in  him  the  almost  over-abundant  materials 
of  both,  is  the  gift  of  one  of  my  countrymen, 
the  late  Rev.  Dr.  Mercer,  of  Newport,  Rhode 
Island,  through  his  executrix,  Mrs.  Pell, 
seems  to  supply  that  argument  of  fitness 
that  would  otherwise  have  been  absent.  It 
does  more,  and  for  this  I  prize  it  the  more ; 
it  adds  a  fresh  proof,  if  any  were  needed, 
that  not  all  the  waters  of  that  ocean  which 
divides  but  cannot  divorce  them  can  wash 
out  of  the  consciousness  of  either  nation  the 
feeling  that  we  hold  our  intellectual  property 
in  common,  that  we  own  allegiance  to  the 


92  COLERIDGE. 

same  moral  and  literary  traditions,  and  that 
the  fame  of  those  who  have  shed  lustre  on 
our  race,  as  it  is  an  undivided  inheritance, 
so  it  imposes  an  equal  debt  of  gratitude,  an 
equal  responsibility,  on  the  two  great  branches 
of  it.  Twice  before  I  have  had  the  honor 
of  speaking  within  the  precincts  of  this 
structure,  the  double  sanctuary  of  religion 
and  renown,  surely  the  most  venerable  of 
ecclesiastical  buildings  to  men  of  English 
blood.  Once  again  I  was  a  silent  spectator 
while  his  body  was  laid  here  to  mingle  with 
consecrated  earth  who  more  deeply  than  any 
other  in  modern  times  had  penetrated  with 
the  ferment  of  his  thought  the  thinking  of 
mankind,  an  event  of  deep  significance  as 
the  proclamation  of  that  truce  between  sci 
ence  and  religion  which  is,  let  us  hope,  the 
forerunner  of  their  ultimate  reconciliation. 
When  I  spoke  here  it  was  in  commemora 
tion  of  personal  friends,  one  of  them  the  late 
Dean  Stanley,  dear  to  all  who  knew  him ; 
the  other  an  American  poet,  dear  to  all  who 
speak  the  English  tongue.  It  is  to  com 
memorate  another  friend  that  I  come  here 
to-day,  for  who  so  worthy  of  the  name  as 
one  who  was  our  companion  and  teacher  in 
the  happiest  hours  of  our  youth,  made  doubly 


COLERIDGE.  93 

happy  by  the  charm  of  his  genius,  and  who 
to  our  old  age  brings  back,  if  not  the  pres 
ence,  at  least  the  radiant  image  of  the  youth 
we  have  lost  ?  Surely  there  are  no  friends 
so  constant  as  the  poets,  and  among  them,  I 
think,  none  more  faithful  than  Coleridge. 
I  am  glad  to  have  a  share  in  this  repara 
tion  of  a  long  injustice,  for  as  we  looked 
about  us  hitherto  in  Poet's  Corner  we  were 
tempted  to  ask,  as  Cavalcante  dei  Cavalcanti 
did  of  Dante,  If  these  are  here  through  lof 
tiness  of  genius,  where  is  he?  It  is  just 
fifty-one  years  ago  that  I  became  the  pos 
sessor  of  an  American  reprint  of  Galignani's 
edition  of  Coleridge,  Shelley,  and  Keats  in 
one  volume.  It  was  a  pirated  book,  and  I 
trust  I  may  be  pardoned  for  the  delight  I 
had  in  it.  I  take  comfort  from  the  thought 
that  there  must  be  many  a  Scottish  minister 
and  laird  now  in  Heaven  who  liked  their 
claret  none  the  less  that  it  had  paid  no  tribute 
to  the  House  of  Hanover.  I  have  heard 
this  trinity  of  poets  taxed  with  incongruity. 
As  for  me,  I  was  grateful  for  such  infinite 
riches  in  a  little  room,  and  never  thought  of 
looking  a  Pegasus  in  the  mouth  whose  triple 
burden  proved  a  stronger  back  than  that 
even  of  the  Templars'  traditional  steed. 


94  COLERIDGE. 

Much  later,  but  still  long  ago,  I  read  the 
"  Friend,"  the  "  Biographia  Literaria,"  and 
other  prose  works  of  Coleridge.  In  what 
may  be  given  me  to  say  I  shall  be  obliged  to 
trust  chiefly  to  a  memory  which  at  my  time 
of  life  is  gradually  becoming  one  of  her 
own  reminiscences,  and  is  forced  to  com 
pound  as  best  she  may  with  her  inexorable 
creditor  —  Oblivion.  But  perhaps  she  will 
serve  me  all  the  better  for  the  matter  in 
hand,  for  what  is  proper  here  is  at  most 
a  rapid  generalization  rather  than  a  demon 
stration  in  detail  of  his  claims  to  grateful 
remembrance.  I  shall  naturally  trust  my 
self  to  judge  him  by  his  literary  rather  than 
by  his  metaphysical  achievement.  In  the  lat 
ter  region  I  cannot  help  being  reminded  of 
the  partiality  he  so  often  betrays  for  clouds, 
and  see  him,  to  use  his  own  words,  "  making 
the  shifting  clouds  seem  what  you  please," 
or  "a  traveller  go  from  mount  to  mount 
through  cloudland,  gorgeous  land."  Or 
sometimes  I  think  of  him  as  an  alchemist  in 
search  of  the  philosopher's  stone,  and  strip 
ping  the  lead,  not  only  from  his  own  roof, 
but  from  that  of  the  parish  church  itself,  to 
quench  the  fiery  thirst  of  his  alembic.  He 
seems  never  to  have  given  up  the  hope  of 


COLERIDGE,  95 

finding  in  the  imagination  some  universal 
solvent,  some  magisterium  majus,  by  which 
the  lead  of  skepticism  should  be  transmuted 
into  the  pure  gold  of  faith,  or,  at  least,  per 
suaded  to  believe  itself  so.  But  we  should 
not  forget  that  many  earnest  and  superior 
minds  found  his  cloud  castles  solid  habita 
tions,  nor  that  alchemy  was  the  nursing 
mother  of  chemistry.  He  certainly  was  a 
main  influence  in  showing  the  English  mind 
how  it  could  emancipate  itself  from  the  vul 
garizing  tyranny  of  common  sense,  and  teach 
ing  it  to  recognize  in  the  imagination  an  im 
portant  factor  not  only  in  the  happiness  but 
in  the  destiny  of  man.  In  criticism  he  was, 
indeed,  a  teacher  and  interpreter  whose  ser 
vice  was  incalculable.  He  owed  much  to 
Lessing,  something  to  Schiller,  and  more  to 
the  younger  Schlegel,  but  he  owed  most 
to  his  own  sympathetic  and  penetrative  im 
agination.  This  was  the  lifted  torch  (to 
borrow  his  own  words  again)  that  bade  the 
starry  walls  of  passages,  dark  before  to  the 
apprehension  of  even  the  most  intelligent 
reader,  sparkle  with  a  lustre,  latent  in  them 
to  be  sure,  but  not  all  their  own.  As  John 
son  said  of  Burke,  he  wound  into  his  subject 
like  a  serpent.  His  analysis  was  elucidative 


96  COLERIDGE. 

mainly,  if  you  will,  but  could  not  have  been 
so  except  in  virtue  of  the  processes  of  con 
structive  and  philosophical  criticism  that  had 
gone  on  so  long  in  his  mind  as  to  make  its 
subtle  apprehension  seem  an  instinct.  As 
he  was  the  first  to  observe  some  of  the  sky's 
appearances  and  some  of  the  shyer  revela 
tions  of  outward  nature,  so  he  was  also  first 
in  noting  some  of  the  more  occult  phenom- 
(  ena  of  thought  and  emotion.  It  is  a  criti 
cism  of  parts  and  passages,  and  was  scat 
tered  carelessly  in  obiter  dicta,  but  it  was 
not  a  bringing  of  the  brick  as  a  specimen  of 
the  whole  house.  It  was  comparative  anat 
omy,  far  rather,  which  from  a  single  bone  re 
constructs  the  entire  living  organism.  Many 
of  his  hints  and  suggestions  are  more  preg 
nant  than  whole  treatises,  as  where  he  says 
that  the  wit  of  Hudibras  is  the  wit  of 
thought. 

But  what  I  think  constitutes  his  great 
power,  as  it  certainly  is  his  greatest  charm, 
is  the  perpetual  presence  of  imagination,  as 
constant  a  quality  with  him  as  fancy  is  with 
Calderon.  She  was  his  lifelong  housemate, 
if  not  always  hanging  over  his  shoulders 
and  whispering  in  his  ear,  yet  within  easy 
call,  like  the  Abra  of  Prior  — 


COLERIDGE.  97 

Abra  was  with  him  ere  he  spoke  her  name, 
And  if  he  called  another,  Abra  came. 

It  was  she  who  gave  him  that  power  of  sym 
pathy  which  made  his  Wallenstein  what  I 
may  call  the  most  original  translation  in  our 
language,  unless  some  of  the  late  Mr.  Fitz 
gerald's  be  reckoned  such.  He  was  not  ex 
act  any  more  than  Chapman.  The  molten 
material  of  his  mind,  too  abundant  for  the 
capacity  of  the  mould,  overflowed  it  in 
gushes  of  fiery  excess.  But  the  main  object 
of  translation  he  accomplishes.  Poetry  is 
reproduced  as  poetry,  and  genius  shows  it 
self  as  genius,  patent  even  in  the  march  of 
the  verse.  As  a  poet,  the  impression  he 
made  upon  his  greater  contemporaries  will, 
I  believe,  be  the  ultimate  verdict  of  criti 
cism.  They  all  thought  of  him  what  Scott 
said  of  him,  "  No  man  has  all  the  resources 
of  poetry  in  such  profusion.  .  .  .  His  fancy 
and  diction  would  long  ago  have  placed  him 
above  all  his  contemporaries  had  they  been 
under  the  direction  of  a  sound  judgment  and 
a  steady  will."  No  doubt  we  have  in  Cole 
ridge  the  most  striking  example  in  literature 
of  a  great  genius  given  in  trust  to  a  nerve 
less  will  and  a  fitful  purpose.  But  I  think 
the  secret  of  his  doing  no  more  in  poetry  is 


98  COLERIDGE. 

to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  the  judgment,  so 
far  from  being  absent,  grew  to  be  there  in 
excess.  His  critical  sense  rose  like  a  forbid 
ding  apparition  in  the  path  of  his  poetic  pro 
duction.  I  have  heard  of  a  military  engineer 
who  knew  so  well  how  a  bridge  should  be 
built  that  he  could  never  build  one.  It  cer 
tainly  was  not  wholly  indolence  that  was  to 
blame  in  Coleridge's  case,  for  though  he  used 
to  say  early  in  life  that  he  had  no  "  finger 
industry,"  yet  he  left  behind  him  a  mass  of 
correspondence,  and  his  letters  are  generally 
long.  But  I  do  not  care  to  discuss  a  ques 
tion  the  answer  to  which  must  be  left  mainly 
to  conjecture  or  to  the  instinct  of  individual 
temperament.  It  is  enough  for  us  here  that 
he  has  written  some  of  the  most  poetical 
poetry  in  the  language,  and  one  poem,  the 
"  Ancient  Mariner,"  not  only  unparalleled, 
but  unapproached  in  its  kind,  and  that  kind 
of  the  rarest.  It  is  marvellous  in  its  mas 
tery  over  that  delightfully  fortuitous  incon 
sequence  that  is  the  adamantine  logic  of 
dreamland.  Coleridge  has  taken  the  old 
ballad  measure  and  given  to  it  by  an  inde 
finable  charm  wholly  his  own  all  the  sweet 
ness,  all  the  melody  and  compass  of  a  sym 
phony.  And  how  picturesque  it  is  in  the 


COLERIDGE.  99 

proper  sense  of  the  word.  I  know  nothing 
like  it.  There  is  not  a  description  in  it.  It 
is  all  picture.  Descriptive  poets  generally 
confuse  us  with  multiplicity  of  detail ;  we 
cannot  see  their  forest  for  the  trees ;  but 
Coleridge  never  errs  in  this  way.  With  in 
stinctive  tact  he  touches  the  right  chord  of 
association,  and  is  satisfied,  as  we  also  are. 
I  should  find  it  hard  to  explain  the  singular 
charm  of  his  diction,  there  is  so  much  nicety 
of  art  and  purpose  in  it,  whether  for  music 
or  meaning.  Nor  does  it  need  any  explana 
tion,  for  we  all  feel  it.  The  words  seem  com 
mon  words  enough,  but  in  the  order  of  them, 
in  the  choice,  variety,  and  position  of  the 
vowel -sounds  they  become  magical.  The 
most  decrepit  vocable  in  the  language  throws 
away  its  crutches  to  dance  and  sing  at  his 
piping.  I  cannot  think  it  a  personal  pecul 
iarity,  but  a  matter  of  universal  experience, 
that  more  bits  of  Coleridge  have  imbedded 
themselves  in  my  memory  than  of  any  other 
poet  who  delighted  my  youth  —  unless  I 
should  except  the  sonnets  of  Shakespeare. 
This  argues  perfectness  of  expression.  Let 
me  cite  an  example  or  two :  — 

The  sun's  rim  dips,  the  stars  rush  out, 
At  one  stride  comes  the  dark ; 


100  COLERIDGE. 

With  far-heard  whisper  through  the  dark 
Off  shot  the  spectre  barque. 

Or  take  this  as  a  bit  of  landscape :  — — 

Beneath  yon  birch  with  silver  bark 
And  boughs  so  pendulous  and  fair, 
The  brook  falls  scattered  down  the  rock, 
And  all  is  mossy  there. 

It  is  a  perfect  little  picture  and  seems  so 
easily  done.  But  try  to  do  something  like 
it.  Coleridge's  words  have  the  unashamed 
nakedness  of  Scripture,  of  the  Eden  of  dic 
tion  ere  the  voluble  serpent  had  entered  it. 
This  felicity  of  speech  in  Coleridge's  best 
verse  is  the  more  remarkable  because  it  was 
an  acquisition.  His  earlier  poems  are  apt 
to  be  turgid,  in  his  prose  there  is  too  often  a 
languor  of  prof usen ess,  and  there  are  pages 
where  he  seems  to  be  talking  to  himself  and 
not  to  us,  as  I  have  heard  a  guide  do  in  the 
tortuous  caverns  of  the  Catacombs  when  he 
\  was  doubtful  if  he  had  not  lost  his  way.  But 
when  his  genius  runs  freely  and  full  in  his 
prose,  the  style,  as  he  said  of  Pascal,  "  is  a 
garment  of  light."  He  knew  all  our  best 
prose  and  knew  the  secret  of  its  composition. 
When  he  is  well  inspired,  as  in  his  best  po 
etry  he  commonly  is,  he  gives  us  the  very 
quintessence  of  perception,  the  clearly  crys- 


COLERIDGE.  101 

tallized  precipitation  of  all  that  is  most  pre 
cious  in  the  ferment  of  impression  after  the 
impertinent  and  obtrusive  particulars  have 
evaporated  from  the  memory.  It  is  the  pure 
visual  ecstacy  disengaged  from  the  confused 
and  confusing  material  that  gave  it  birth. 
It  seems  the  very  beatitude  of  artless  simpli 
city,  and  is  the  most  finished  product  of  art. 
I  know  nothing  so  perfect  in  its  kind  since 
Dante.  The  tiny  landscape  I  have  cited  re 
minds  me  in  its  laconic  adequacy  of  — 

Li  ruscelletti  che  de'  verdi  colli 

Del  Casentin  discendon  giuso  in  Arno, 

Faccendo  i  lor  canali  e  freddi  e  molli. 

I  confess  that  I  prefer  the  "  Ancient  Mar 
iner  "  to  "  Christabel,"  fine  as  that  poem  is 
in  parts  and  tantalizing  as  it  is  in  the  sug 
gestion  of  deeper  meanings  than  were  ever 
there.  The  "  Ancient  Mariner  "  seems  to 
have  come  of  itself.  In  "  Christabel "  I 
fancy  him  saying,  "  Go  to,  let  us  write  an 
imaginative  poem."  It  never  could  be  fin* 
ished  on  those  terms. 

This  is  not  the  time  nor  the  place  to  pass 
judgment  on  Coleridge  the  man.  Doubtless 
it  would  have  been  happier  for  him  had  he 
been  endowed  with  the  business  faculty  that 
makes  his  friend  Wordsworth  so  almost 


102  COLERIDGE. 

irritatingly  respectable.  But  would  it  have 
been  happier  for  us  ?  We  are  here  to-day 
not  to  consider  what  Coleridge  owed  to  him 
self,  to  his  family,  or  to  the  world,  but  what 
we  owe  to  him.  Let  us  at  least  not  volun 
teer  to  draw  his  frailties  from  their  dread 
abode.  Our  own  are  a  far  more  profitable 
subject  of  contemplation.  Let  the  man  of 
imaginative  temperament,  who  has  never 
procrastinated,  who  has  made  all  that  was 
possible  of  his  powers,  cast  the  first  stone. 
The  cairn,  I  think,  will  not  be  as  tall  as 
Hector's.  With  Coleridge  I  believe  the 
opium  to  have  been  congenital,  and  if  we 
may  judge  by  many  a  profoundly  pathetic 
cry  both  in  his  poems  and  his  letters,  he 
answered  grievously  for  his  frailties  during 
the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life.  In  an  un 
published  letter  of  his  he  says,  speaking  of 
another,  but  thinking  certainly  of  himself, 
"An  unfortunate  man,  enemy  to  himself 
only,  and  like  all  of  that  character  expiat 
ing  his  faults  by  suffering  beyond  what  the 
severest  judge  would  have  inflicted  as  their 
due  punishment."  There  let  us  leave  it,  for 
nothing  is  more  certain  than  that  our  per 
sonal  weaknesses  exact  the  uttermost  far 
thing  of  penalty  from  us  while  we  live. 


COLERIDGE.  103 

Even  in  the  dilapidation  of  his  powers,  due 
chiefly,  if  you  will,  to  his  own  unthrifty  man 
agement  of  them,  we  might,  making  proper 
deductions,  apply  to  him  what  Mark  Antony 
says  of  the  dead  Caesar  — 

He  was  the  ruins  of  the  noblest  man 
That  ever  lived  in  the  tide  of  time. 

Whatever  may  have  been  his  faults  and 
weaknesses,  he  was  the  man  of  all  his  gener 
ation  to  whom  we  should  most  unhesitatingly 
allow  the  distinction  of  genius,  that  is,  of 
one  authentically  possessed  from  time  to 
time  by  some  influence  that  made  him  better 
and  greater  than  himself.  If  he  lost  himself 
too  much  in  what  Mr.  Pater  has  admirably 
called  "  impassioned  contemplation,"  he  has 
at  least  left  us  such  a  legacy  as  only  genius, 
and  genius  not  always,  can  leave.  It  is  for 
this  that  we  pay  him  this  homage  of  mem 
ory.  He  himself  has  said  that  — 

It  seems  like  stories  from  the  land  of  spirits 
If  any  man  obtain  that  which  he  merits, 
Or  any  merit  that  which  he  attains. 

Both  conditions  are  fulfilled  to-day. 


BOOKS   AND   LIBRARIES. 


ADDRESS  AT  THE  OPENING  OF  THE  FREE  PUBLIC 

LIBRARY  IN  CHELSEA,   MASSACHUSETTS, 

22  DECEMBER,  1886. 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 


A  FEW  years  ago  my  friend,  Mr.  Alex 
ander  Ireland,  published  a  very  interesting 
volume  which  he  called  "  The  Book-Lover's 
Enchiridion,"  the  handbook,  that  is  to  say, 
of  those  who  love  books.  It  was  made  up 
of  extracts  from  the  writings  of  a  great 
variety  of  distinguished  men,  ancient  and 
modern,  in  praise  of  books.  It  was  a  chorus 
of  many  voices  in  many  tongues,  a  hymn  of 
gratitude  and  praise,  full  of  such  piety  and 
fervor  as  can  be  paralleled  only  in  songs  ded 
icated  to  the  supreme  Power,  the  supreme 
Wisdom  and  the  supreme  Love.  Nay,  there 
is  a  glow  of  enthusiasm  and  sincerity  in  it 
which  is  often  painfully  wanting  in  those 
other  too  commonly  mechanical  compositions. 
We  feel  at  once  that  here  it  is  out  of  the 
fulness  of  the  heart,  yes,  and  of  the  head, 
too,  that  the  mouth  speaketh.  Here  was 
none  of  that  compulsory  commonplace  which 


108  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

is  wont  to  characterize  those  "  testimonials 
of  celebrated  authors,"  by  means  of  which 
publishers  sometimes  strive  to  linger  out  the 
passage  of  a  hopeless  book  toward  its  requi- 
escat  in  oblivion.  These  utterances  which 
Mr.  Ireland  has  gathered  lovingly  together 
are  stamped  with  that  spontaneousness  which 
is  the  mint-mark  of  all  sterling  speech.  It 
is  true  that  they  are  mostly,  as  is  only  nat 
ural,  the  utterances  of  literary  men,  and 
there  is  a  well-founded  proverbial  distrust 
of  herring  that  bear  only  the  brand  of  the 
packer,  and  not  that  of  the  sworn  inspector. 
But  to  this  objection  a  cynic  might  answer 
with  the  question,  "  Are  authors  so  prone, 
then,  to  praise  the  works  of  other  people 
that  we  are  to  doubt  them  when  they  do  it 
unasked?"  Perhaps  the  wisest  thing  I 
could  have  done  to-night  would  have  been  to 
put  upon  the  stand  some  of  the  more  weighty 
of  this  cloud  of  witnesses.  But  since  your 
invitation  implied  that  I  should  myself  say 
something,  I  will  endeavor  to  set  before  you 
a  few  of  the  commonplaces  of  the  occasion, 
as  they  may  be  modified  by  passing  through 
my  own  mind,  or  by  having  made  themselves 
felt  in  my  own  experience. 

The   greater  part  of   Mr.  Ireland's   wit- 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  109 

nesses  testify  to  the  comfort  and  consolation 
they  owe  to  books,  to  the  refuge  they  have 
found  in  them  from  sorrow  or  misfortune, 
to  their  friendship,  never  estranged  and 
outliving  all  others.  This  testimony  they 
volunteered.  Had  they  been  asked,  they 
would  have  borne  evidence  as  willingly  to 
the  higher  and  more  general  uses  of  books 
in  their  service  to  the  commonwealth,  as 
well  as  to  the  individual  man.  Consider, 
for  example,  how  a  single  page  of  Burke 
may  emancipate  the  young  student  of  poli 
tics  from  narrow  views  and  merely  contem 
poraneous  judgments.  Our  English  ances 
tors,  with  that  common-sense  which  is  one 
of  the  most  useful,  though  not  one  of  the 
most  engaging,  properties  of  the  race,  made 
a  rhyming  proverb,  which  says  that  — 

When  land  and  goods  are  gone  and  spent, 
Then  learning1  is  most  excellent ; 

and  this  is  true  so  far  as  it  goes,  though  it 
goes  perhaps  hardly  far  enough.  The  law 
also  calls  only  the  earth  and  what  is  immov 
ably  attached  to  it  real  property,  but  I  am  of 
opinion  that  those  only  are  real  possessions 
which  abide  with  a  man  after  he  has  been 
stripped  of  those  others  falsely  so  called, 
and  which  alone  save  him  from  seeming  and 


110  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

from  being  the  miserable  forked  radish  to 
which  the  bitter  scorn  of  Lear  degraded 
every  child  of  Adam.  The  riches  of  scholar 
ship,  the  benignities  of  literature  defy  for 
tune  and  outlive  calamity.  They  are  beyond 
the  reach  of  thief  or  moth  or  rust.  As  they 
cannot  be  inherited,  so  they  cannot  be  alien 
ated.  But  they  may  be  shared,  they  may 
be  distributed,  and  it  is  the  object  and  office 
of  a  free  public  library  to  perform  these 
beneficent  functions. 

"  Books,"  says  Wordsworth,  "  are  a  real 
world,"  and  he  was  thinking,  doubtless,  of 
such  books  as  are  not  merely  the  triumphs 
of  pure  intellect,  however  supreme,  but  of 
those  in  which  intellect  infused  with  the 
sense  of  beauty  aims  rather  to  produce  de 
light  than  conviction,  or,  if  conviction,  then 
through  intuition  rather  than  formal  logic, 
and,  leaving  what  Donne  wisely  calls  — 

Unconcerning  things  matters  of  fact 

to  science  and  the  understanding,  seeks  to 
give  ideal  expression  to  those  abiding  reali 
ties  of  the  spiritual  world  for  which  the  out 
ward  and  visible  world  serves  at  best  but  as 
the  husk  and  symbol.  Am  I  wrong  in  using 
the  word  realities  ?  wrong  in  insisting  on  the 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  HI 

distinction  between  the  real  and  the  actual  ? 
in  assuming  for  the  ideal  an  existence  as 
absolute  and  self  subsistent  as  that  which 
appeals  to  our  senses,  nay,  so  often  cheats 
them,  in  the  matter  of  fact  ?  How  very 
small  a  part  of  the  world  we  truly  live  in  is 
represented  by  what  speaks  to  us  through 
the  senses  when  compared  with  that  vast 
realm  of  the  mind  which  is  peopled  by 
memory  and  imagination,  and  with  such 
shining  inhabitants !  These  walls,  these 
faces,  what  are  they  in  comparison  with  the 
countless  images,  the  innumerable  popula 
tion  which  every  one  of  us  can  summon  up 
to  the  tiny  show-box  of  the  brain,  in  mate 
rial  breadth  scarce  a  span,  yet  infinite  as 
space  and  time?  and  in  what,  I  pray,  are 
those  we  gravely  call  historical  characters, 
of  which  each  new  historian  strains  his  neck 
to  get  a  new  and  different  view,  in  any 
sense  more  real  than  the  personages  of  fic 
tion?  Do  not  serious  and  earnest  men  dis 
cuss  Hamlet  as  they  would  Cromwell  or 
Lincoln  ?  Does  Caesar,  does  Alaric,  hold  ex 
istence  by  any  other  or  stronger  tenure  than 
the  Christian  of  Bunyan  or  the  Don  Quixote 
of  Cervantes  or  the  Antigone  of  Sophocles  ? 
Is  not  the  history  which  is  luminous  because 


112  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

of  an  indwelling  and  perennial  truth  to  na 
ture,  because  of  that  light  which  never  was 
on  land  or  sea,  really  more  true,  in  the  high 
est  sense,  than  many  a  weary  chronicle  with 
names  and  date  and  place  in  which  "  an 
Amurath  to  Amurath  succeeds  "  ?  Do  we 
know  as  much  of  any  authentic  Danish 
prince  as  of  Hamlet  ? 

But  to  come  back  a  little  nearer  to  Chel 
sea  and  the  occasion  that  has  called  us  to 
gether.  The  founders  of  New  England,  if 
sometimes,  when  they  found  it  needful,  an 
impracticable,  were  always  a  practical  people. 
Their  first  care,  no  doubt,  was  for  an  ade 
quate  supply  of  powder,  and  they  encouraged 
the  manufacture  of  musket  bullets  by  enact 
ing  that  they  should  pass  as  currency  at  a 
farthing  each  —  a  coinage  nearer  to  its  nom 
inal  value  and  not  heavier  than  some  with 
which  we  are  familiar.  Their  second  care 
was  that  "  good  learning  should  not  perish 
from  among  us,"  and  to  this  end  they  at  once 
established  the  Grammar  (Latin)  School  in 
Boston,  and  soon  after  the  college  at  Cam 
bridge.  The  nucleus  of  this  was,  as  you  all 
know,  the  bequest  in  money  by  John  Har 
vard.  Hardly  less  important,  however,  was 
the  legacy  of  his  library,  a  collection  of  good 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  113 

books,  inconsiderable  measured  by  the  stand 
ard  of  to-day,  but  very  considerable  then  as 
the  possession  of  a  private  person.  From 
that  little  acorn  what  an  oak  has  sprung, 
and  from  its  acorns  again  what  a  vocal  for 
est,  as  old  Howell  would  have  called  it,  —  old 
Howell  whom  I  love  to  cite,  because  his 
name  gave  their  title  to  the  "  Essays  of 
Elia,"  and  is  borne  with  slight  variation  by 
one  of  the  most  delightful  of  modern  au 
thors.  It  was,  in  my  judgment,  those  two 
foundations,  more  than  anything  else,  which 
gave  to  New  England  character  its  bent,  and 
to  Boston  that  literary  supremacy  which,  I 
am  told,  she  is  in  danger  of  losing,  but  which 
she  will  not  lose  till  she  and  all  the  world 
lose  Holmes. 

The  opening  of  a  free  public  library,  then, 
is  a  most  important  event  in  the  history  of 
any  town.  A  college  training  is  an  excel 
lent  thing ;  but,  after  all,  the  better  part  of 
every  man's  education  is  that  which  he  gives 
himself,  and  it  is  for  this  that  a  good  library 
should  furnish  the  opportunity  and  the  means. 
I  have  sometimes  thought  that  our  public 
schools  undertook  to  teach  too  much,  and 
that  the  older  system,  which  taught  merely 
the  three  R's,  and  taught  them  well,  leaving 


114  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

natural  selection  to  decide  who  should  go 
farther,  was  the  better.  However  this  may 
be,  all  that  is  primarily  needful  in  order  to 
use  a  library  is  the  ability  to  read.  I  say 
primarily,  for  there  must  also  be  the  inclina 
tion,  and,  after  that,  some  guidance  in  read 
ing  well.  Formerly  the  duty  of  a  librarian 
was  considered  too  much  that  of  a  watch-dog, 
to  keep  people  as  much  as  possible  away 
from  the  books,  and  to  hand  these  over  to 
his  successor  as  little  worn  by  use  as  he 
could.  Librarians  now,  it  is  pleasant  to  see, 
have  a  different  notion  of  their  trust,  and 
are  in  the  habit  of  preparing,  for  the  direc 
tion  of  the  inexperienced,  lists  of  such  books 
as  they  think  best  worth  reading.  Cata 
loguing  has  also,  thanks  in  great  measure  to 
American  librarians,  become  a  science,  and 
catalogues,  ceasing  to  be  labyrinths  without 
a  clew,  are  furnished  with  finger-posts  at 
every  turn.  Subject  catalogues  again  save 
the  beginner  a  vast  deal  of  time  and  trouble 
by  supplying  him  for  nothing  with  one  at 
least  of  the  results  of  thorough  scholarship, 
the  knowing  where  to  look  for  what  he  wants. 
I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  there  is  or  can  be 
any  short  cut  to  learning,  but  that  there  may 
be,  and  is,  such  a  short  cut  to  information 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  115 

that  will  make  learning  more  easily  acces 
sible. 

But  have  you  ever  rightly  considered  what 
the  mere  ability  to  read  means  ?  That  it  is 
the  key  which  admits  us  to  the  whole  world 
of  thought  and  fancy  and  imagination?  to 
the  company  of  saint  and  sage,  of  the  wisest 
and  the  wittiest  at  their  wisest  and  wittiest 
moment  ?  That  it  enables  us  to  see  with  the 
keenest  eyes,  hear  with  the  finest  ears,  and 
listen  to  the  sweetest  voices  of  all  time  ? 
More  than  that,  it  annihilates  time  and  space 
for  us ;  it  revives  for  us  without  a  miracle 
the  Age  of  Wonder,  endowing  us  with  the 
shoes  of  swiftness  and  the  cap  of  darkness, 
so  that  we  walk  invisible  like  fern-seed,  and 
witness  unharmed  the  plague  at  Athens  or 
Florence  or  London  ;  accompany  Caesar  on 
his  marches,  or  look  in  on  Catiline  in  coun- 
fcil  with  his  fellow  conspirators,  or  Guy 
Fawkes  in  the  cellar  of  St.  Stephen's.  We 
i  often  hear  of  people  who  will  descend  to  any 
servility,  submit  to  any  insult,  for  the  sake 
of  getting  themselves  or  their  children  into 
what  is  euphemistically  called  good  society. 
Did  it  ever  occur  to  them  that  there  is  a 
select  society  of  all  the  centuries  to  which 
they  and  theirs  can  be  admitted  for  the 


116  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

asking,  a  society,  too,  which  will  not  involve 
them  in  ruinous  expense  and  still  more  ruin 
ous  waste  of  time  and  health  and  faculties  ? 
Southey  tells  us  that,  in  his  walk  one 
stormy  day,  he  met  an  old  woman,  to  whom, 
by  way  of  greeting,  he  made  the  rather  ob 
vious  remark  that  it  was  dreadful  weather. 
She  answered,  philosophically,  that,  in  her 
opinion,  "  any  weather  was  better  than 
none ! "  I  should  be  half  inclined  to  say 
that  any  reading  was  better  than  none,  al 
laying  the  crudeness  of  the  statement  by  the 
Yankee  proverb,  which  tells  us  that,  though 
"  all  deacons  are  good,  there  's  odds  in  dea 
cons."  Among  books,  certainly,  there  is 
much  variety  of  company,  ranging  from  the 
best  to  the  worst,  from  Plato  to  Zola,  and 
the  first  lesson  in  reading  well  is  that  which 
teaches  us  to  distinguish  between  literature 
and  merely  printed  matter.  The  choice  lies 
wholly  with  ourselves.  We  have  the  key 
put  into  our  hands ;  shall  we  unlock  the 
pantry  or  the  oratory  ?  There  is  a  Walla- 
chian  legend  which,  like  most  of  the  fig 
ments  of  popular  fancy,  has  a  moral  in  it. 
One  Bakala,  a  good-for-nothing  kind  of  fel 
low  in  his  way,  having  had  the  luck  to  offer 
a  sacrifice  especially  well  pleasing  to  God, 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  117 

is  taken  up  into  heaven.  He  finds  the  Al 
mighty  sitting  in  something  like  the  best 
room  of  a  Wallachian  peasant's  cottage  — 
there  is  always  a  profound  pathos  in  the 
homeliness  of  the  popular  imagination, 
forced,  like  the  princess  in  the  fairy  tale,  to 
weave  its  semblance  of  gold  tissue  out  of 
straw.  On  being  asked  what  reward  he  de 
sires  for  the  good  service  he  has  done,  Ba- 
kala,  who  had  always  passionately  longed  to 
be  the  owner  of  a  bagpipe,  seeing  a  half 
worn-out  one  lying  among  some  rubbish  in 
a  corner  of  the  room,  begs  eagerly  that  it 
may  be  bestowed  on  him.  The  Lord,  with 
a  smile  of  pity  at  the  meanness  of  his  choice, 
grants  him  his  boon,  and  Bakala  goes  back 
to  earth  delighted  with  his  prize.  With  an 
infinite  possibility  within  his  reach,  with  the 
choice  of  wisdom,  of  power,  of  beauty  at  his 
tongue's  end,  he  asked  according  to  his  kind, 
and  his  sordid  wish  is  answered  with  a  gift 
as  sordid.  Yes,  there  is  a  choice  in  books  as 
in  friends,  and  the  mind  sinks  or  rises  to  the 
level  of  its  habitual  society,  is  subdued,  as 
Shakespeare  says  of  the  dyer's  hand,  to  what 
it  works  in.  Cato's  advice,  cum  bonis  am- 
bula,  consort  with  the  good,  is  quite  as  true 
if  we  extend  it  to  books,  for  they,  too,  in- 


118  BOOKS  AND   LIBRARIES. 

sensibly  give  away  their  own  nature  to  the 
mind  that  converses  with  them.  They  either 
beckon  upwards  or  drag  down.  Du  gleichst 
dem  Geist  den  du  begreifst,  says  the  World 
Spirit  to  Faust,  and  this  is  true  of  the  as 
cending  no  less  than  of  the  descending  scale. 
Every  book  we  read  may  be  made  a  round 
in  the  ever-lengthening  ladder  by  which  we 
climb  to  knowledge  and  to  that  temper 
ance  and  serenity  of  mind  which,  as  it  is  the 
ripest  fruit  of  Wisdom,  is  also  the  sweetest. 
But  this  can  only  be  if  we  read  such  books 
as  make  us  think,  and  read  them  in  such  a 
way  as  helps  them  to  do  so,  that  is,  by  en 
deavoring  to  judge  them,  and  thus  to  make 
them  an  exercise  rather  than  a  relaxation 
of  the  mind.  Desultory  reading,  except  as 
conscious  pastime,  hebetates  the  brain  and 
slackens  the  bow-string  of  Will.  It  commu 
nicates  as  little  intelligence  as  the  messages 
that  run  along  the  telegraph  wire  to  the 
birds  that  perch  on  it.  Few  men  learn  the 
highest  use  of  books.  After  lifelong  study 
many  a  man  discovers  too  late  that  to  have 
had  the  philosopher's  stone  availed  nothing 
without  the  philosopher  to  use  it.  Many  a 
scholarly  life,  stretched  like  a  talking  wire  to 
bring  the  wisdom  of  antiquity  into  commu- 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  119 

nion  with  the  present,  can  at  last  yield  us  no 
better  news  than  the  true  accent  of  a  Greek 
verse,  or  the  translation  of  some  filthy  noth 
ing  scrawled  on  the  walls  of  a  brothel  by 
some  Pompeian  idler.  And  it  is  certainly 
true  that  the  material  of  thought  reacts 
upon  the  thought  itself.  Shakespeare  him 
self  would,  have  been  commonplace  had  he 
been  paddocked  in  a  thinly-shaven  vocab 
ulary,  and  Phidias,  had  he  worked  in  wax, 
only  a  more  inspired  Mrs.  Jarley.  A  man 
is  known,  says  the  proverb,  by  the  com 
pany  he  keeps,  and  not  only  so,  but  made  by 
it.  Milton  makes  his  fallen  angels  grow 
small  to  enter  the  infernal  council  room,  but 
the  soul,  which  God  meant  to  be  the  spa 
cious  chamber  where  high  thoughts  and  gen 
erous  aspirations  might  commune  together, 
shrinks  and  narrows  itself  to  the  measure  of 
the  meaner  company  that  is  wont  to  gather 
there,  hatching  conspiracies  against  our  bet 
ter  selves.  We  are  apt  to  wonder  at  the 
scholarship  of  the  men  of  three  centuries 
ago  and  at  a  certain  dignity  of  phrase  that 
characterizes  them.  They  were  scholars  be 
cause  they  did  not  read  so  many  things  as 
we.  They  had  fewer  books,  but  these  were 
of  the  best.  Their  speech  was  noble,  be- 


120  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

cause  they  lunched  with  Plutarch  and  supped 
with  Plato.  We  spend  as  much  time  over 
print  as  they  did,  but  instead  of  communing 
with  the  choice  thoughts  of  choice  spirits, 
and  unconsciously  acquiring  the  grand  man 
ner  of  that  supreme  society,  we  diligently  in 
form  ourselves,  and  cover  the  continent  with 
a  cobweb  of  telegraphs  to  inform  ,us,  of  such 
inspiring  facts  as  that  a  horse  belonging 
to  Mr.  Smith  ran  away  on  Wednesday,  se 
riously  damaging  a  valuable  carryall;  that 
a  son  of  Mr.  Brown  swallowed  a  hickory  nut 
on  Thursday ;  and  that  a  gravel  bank  caved 
in  and  buried  Mr.  Robinson  alive  on  Friday. 
Alas,  it  is  we  ourselves  that  are  getting 
buried  alive  under  this  avalanche  of  earthy 
impertinences !  It  is  we  who,  while  we  might 
each  in  his  humble  way  be  helping  our  fel 
lows  into  the  right  path,  or  adding  one  block 
to  the  climbing  spire  of  a  fine  soul,  are  will 
ing  to  become  mere  sponges  saturated  from 
the  stagnant  goosepond  of  village  gossip. 
This  is  the  kind  of  news  we  compass  the 
globe  to  catch,  fresh  from  Bungtown  Centre, 
when  we  might  have  it  fresh  from  heaven  by 
the  electric  lines  of  poet  or  prophet !  It  is 
bad  enough  that  we  should  be  compelled  to 
know  so  many  nothings,  but  it  is  downright 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  121 

intolerable  that  we  must  wash  so  many  bar 
row-loads  of  gravel  to  find  a  grain  of  mica 
after  all.  And  then  to  be  told  that  the  abil 
ity  to  read  makes  us  all  shareholders  in  the 
Bonanza  Mine  of  Universal  Intelligence ! 

One  is  sometimes  asked  by  young  people 
to  recommend  a  course  of  reading.  My 
advice  would  be  that  they  should  confine 
themselves  to  the  supreme  books  in  what 
ever  literature,  or  still  better  to  choose  some 
one  great  author,  and  make  themselves  thor 
oughly  familiar  with  him.  For,  as  all  roads 
lead  to  Rome,  so  do  they  likewise  lead  away 
from  it,  and  you  will  find  that,  in  order  to 
understand  perfectly  and  weigh  exactly  any 
vital  piece  of  literature,  you  will  be  gradu 
ally  and  pleasantly  persuaded  to  excursions 
and  explorations  of  which  you  little  dreamed 
when  you  began,  and  will  find  yourselves 
scholars  before  you  are  aware.  For  remem 
ber  that  there  is  nothing  less  profitable  than 
scholarship  for  the  mere  sake  of  scholarship, 
nor  anything  more  wearisome  in  the  attain 
ment.  But  the  moment  you  have  a  definite 
aim,  attention  is  quickened,  the  mother  of 
memory,  and  all  that  you  acquire  groups 
and  arranges  itself  in  an  order  that  is  lucid, 
because  everywhere  and  always  it  is  in  intel- 


122  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

ligent  relation  to  a  central  object  of  constant 
and  growing  interest.  This  method  also 
forces  upon  us  the  necessity  of  thinking, 
which  is,  after  all,  the  highest  result  of  all 
education.  For  what  we  want  is  not  learn 
ing,  but  knowledge;  that  is,  the  power  to 
make  learning  answer  its  true  end  as  a 
quickener  of  intelligence  and  a  widener  of 
our  intellectual  sympathies.  I  do  not  mean 
to  say  that  every  one  is  fitted  by  nature  or 
inclination  for  a  definite  course  of  study,  or 
indeed  for  serious  study  in  any  sense.  I  am 
quite  willing  that  these  should  "  browse  in  a 
library,"  as  Dr.  Johnson  called  it,  to  their 
hearts'  content.  It  is,  perhaps,  the  only  way 
in  which  time  may  be  profitably  wasted. 
But  desultory  reading  will  not  make  a  "  full 
man,"  as  Bacon  understood  it,  of  one  who 
has  not  Johnson's  memory,  his  power  of  as 
similation,  and,  above  all,  his  comprehensive 
view  of  the  relations  of  things.  "Read 
not,"  says  Lord  Bacon,  in  his  Essay  of  Stud 
ies,  "  to  contradict  and  confute ;  nor  to  be 
lieve  and  take  for  granted  ;  nor  to  find  talk 
and  discourse ;  but  to  weigh  and  consider. 
Some  books  are  to  be  tasted,  others  to  be 
swallowed,  and  some  few  to  be  chewed  and 
digested ;  that  is,  some  books  are  to  be  read 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  123 

only  in  parts  ;  others  to  be  read,  but  not  cu 
riously  [carefully],  and  some  few  to  be  read 
wholly  and  with  diligence  and  attention. 
Some  books  also  may  be  read  by  deputy" 
This  is  weighty  and  well  said,  and  I  would 
call  your  attention  especially  to  the  wise 
words  with  which  the  passage  closes.  The 
best  books  are  not  always  those  which  lend 
themselves  to  discussion  and  comment,  but 
those  (like  Montaigne's  Essays)  which  dis 
cuss  and  comment  ourselves. 

I  have  been  speaking  of  such  books  as 
should  be  chosen  for  profitable  reading.  A 
public  library,  of  course,  must  be  far  wider 
in  its  scope.  It  should  contain  something 
for  all  tastes,  as  well  as  the  material  for  a 
thorough  grounding  in  all  branches  of  knowl 
edge.  It  should  be  rich  in  books  of  refer 
ence,  in  encyclopaedias,  where  one  may  learn 
without  cost  of  research  what  things  are 
generally  known.  For  it  is  far  more  useful 
to  know  these  than  to  know  those  that  are 
not  generally  known.  Not  to  know  them  is 
the  defect  of  those  half-trained  and  there 
fore  hasty  men  who  find  a  mare's  nest  on 
every  branch  of  the  tree  of  knowledge.  A 
library  should  contain  ample  stores  of  his- 
r,  which,  if  it  do  not  always  deserve  the 


124  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

pompous  title  which  Bolingbroke  gave  it,  of 
philosophy  teaching  by  example,  certainly 
teaches  many  things  profitable  for  us  to 
know  and  lay  to  heart ;  teaches,  among 
other  things,  how  much  of  the  present  is  still 
held  in  mortmain  by  the  past ;  teaches  that, 
if  there  be  no  controlling  purpose,  there  is, 
at  least,  a  sternly  logical  sequence  in  human 
affairs,  and  that  chance  has  but  a  trifling 
dominion  over  them  ;  teaches  why  things  are 
and  must  be  so  and  not  otherwise,  and  that, 
of  all  hopeless  contests,  the  most  hopeless  is 
that  which  fools  are  most  eager  to  challenge 
—  with  the  Nature  of  Things ;  teaches,  per 
haps,  more  than  anything  else,  the  value  of 
personal  character  as  a  chief  factor  in  what 
used  to  be  called  destiny,  for  that  cause  is 
strong  which  has  not  a  multitude,  but  one 
strong  man  behind  it.  History  is,  indeed, 
mainly  the  biography  of  a  few  imperial  men, 
and  forces  home  upon  us  the  useful  lesson 
how  infinitesimally  important  our  own  pri 
vate  affairs  are  to  the  universe  in  general. 
History  is  clarified  experience,  and  yet  how 
little  do  men  profit  by  it ;  nay,  how  should 
we  expect  it  of  those  who  so  seldom  are 
taught  anything  by  their  own  !  Delusions, 
especially  economical  delusions,  seem  the 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  125 

only  things  that  have  any  chance  of  an 
earthly  immortality.  I  would  have  plenty 
of  biography.  It  is  no  insignificant  fact 
that  eminent  men  have  always  loved  their 
Plutarch,  since  example,  whether  for  emu 
lation  or  avoidance,  is  never  so  poignant  as 
when  presented  to  us  in  a  striking  personal 
ity.  Autobiographies  are  also  instructive 
reading  to  the  student  of  human  nature, 
though  generally  written  by  men  who  are 
more  interesting  to  themselves  than  to  their 
fellow  men.  I  have  been  told  that  Emerson 
and  George  Eliot  agreed  in  thinking  Rous 
seau's  "Confessions"  the  most  interesting 
book  they  had  ever  read. 

A  public  library  should  also  have  many 
and  full  shelves  of  political  economy,  for  the 
dismal  science,  as  Carlyle  called  it,  if  it 
prove  nothing  else,  will  go  far  towards  prov 
ing  that  theory  is  the  bird  in  the  bush, 
though  she  sing  more  sweetly  than  the  night 
ingale,  and  that  the  millennium  will  not 
hasten  its  coming  in  deference  to  the  most 
convincing  string  of  resolutions  that  were 
ever  unanimously  adopted  in  public  meeting. 
It  likewise  induces  in  us  a  profound  and 
wholesome  distrust  of  social  panaceas. 

I  would  have  a  public  library  abundant 


126  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

in  translations  of  the  best  books  in  all  lan 
guages,  for,  though  no  work  of  genius  can 
be  adequately  translated,  because  every  word 
of  it  is  permeated  with  what  Milton  calls 
"  the  precious  life-blood  of  a  master  spirit  " 
which  cannot  be  transfused  into  the  veins  of 
the  best  translation,  yet  some  acquaintance 
with  foreign  and  ancient  literatures  has  the 
liberalizing  effect  of  foreign  travel.  He 
who  travels  by  translation  travels  more  has 
tily  and  superficially,  but  brings  home  some 
thing  that  is  worth  having,  nevertheless. 
Translations  properly  used,  by  shortening 
the  labor  of  acquisition,  add  as  many  years 
to  our  lives  as  they  subtract  from  the  pro 
cesses  of  our  education.  Looked  at  from 
any  but  the  aesthetic  point  of  view,  transla 
tions  retain  whatever  property  was  in  their 
originals  to  enlarge,  liberalize,  and  refine  the 
mind.  At  the  same  time  I  would  have  also 
the  originals  of  these  translated  books  as  a 
temptation  to  the  study  of  languages,  which 
has  a  special  use  and  importance  of  its  own 
in  teaching  us  to  understand  the  niceties  of 
our  mother  tongue.  The  practice  of  transla 
tion,  by  making  us  deliberate  in  the  choice 
of  the  best  equivalent  of  the  foreign  word  in 
our  own  language,  has  likewise  the  advan- 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  127 

tage  of  continually  schooling  us  in  one  of 
the  main  elements  of  a  good  style,  —  pre 
cision  ;  and  precision  of  thought  is  not  only 
exemplified  by  precision  of  language,  but  is 
largely  dependent  on  the  habit  of  it. 

In  such  a  library  the  sciences  should  be 
fully  represented,  that  men  may  at  least 
learn  to  know  in  what  a  marvellous  museum 
they  live,  what  a  wonder-worker  is  giving 
them  an  exhibition  daily  for  nothing.  Nor 
let  Art  be  forgotten  in  all  its  many  forms, 
not  as  the  antithesis  of  Science,  but  as  her 
elder  or  fairer  sister,  whom  we  love  all  the 
more  that  her  usefulness  cannot  be  demon 
strated  in  dollars  and  cents.  I  should  be 
thankful  if  every  day-laborer  among  us  could 
have  his  mind  illumined,  as  those  of  Athens 
and  of  Florence  had,  with  some  image  of 
what  is  best  in  architecture,  painting,  and 
sculpture,  to  train  his  crude  perceptions  and 
perhaps  call  out  latent  faculties.  I  should 
like  to  see  the  works  of  Ruskin  within  the 
reach  of  every  artisan  among  us.  For  I 
hope  some  day  that  the  delicacy  of  touch 
and  accuracy  of  eye  that  have  made  our  me 
chanics  in  some  departments  the  best  in  the 
world,  may  give  us  the  same  supremacy  in 
works  of  wider  range  and  more  purely  ideal 
scope. 


128  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

Voyages  and  travels  I  would  also  have, 
good  store,  especially  the  earlier,  when  the 
world  was  fresh  and  unhackneyed  and  men 
saw  things  invisible  to  the  modern  eye. 
They  are  fast  sailing  ships  to  waft  away  from 
present  trouble  to  the  Fortunate  Isles. 

To  wash  down  the  drier  morsels  that  every 
library  must  necessarily  offer  at  its  board, 
let  there  be  plenty  of  imaginative  literature, 
and  let  its  range  be  not  too  narrow  to  stretch 
from  Dante  to  the  elder  Dumas.  The  world 
of  the  imagination  is  not  the  world  of 
abstraction  and  nonentity,  as  some  con 
ceive,  but  a  world  formed  out  of  chaos  by  a 
sense  of  the  beauty  that  is  in  man  and  the 
earth  on  which  he  dwells.  It  is  the  realm 
of  Might-be,  our  haven  of  refuge  from  the 
shortcomings  and  disillusions  of  life.  It  is, 
to  quote  Spenser,  who  knew  it  well  — 

The  world's  sweet  inn  from  care  and  wearisome  turmoil. 

Do  we  believe,  then,  that  God  gave  us  in 
mockery  this  splendid  faculty  of  sympathy 
with  things  that  are  a  joy  forever?  For  my 
part,  I  believe  that  the  love  and  study  of 
works  of  imagination  is  of  practical  utility 
in  a  country  so  profoundly  material  (or,  as 
we  like  to  call  it,  practical)  in  its  leading 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  129 

tendencies  as  ours.  The  hunger  after  purely 
intellectual  delights,  the  content  with  ideal 
possessions,  cannot  but  be  good  for  us  in 
maintaining  a  wholesome  balance  of  the 
character  and  of  the  faculties.  I  for  one 
shall  never  be  persuaded  that  Shakespeare 
left  a  less  useful  legacy  to  his  countrymen 
than  Watt.  We  hold  all  the  deepest,  all 
the  highest  satisfactions  of  life  as  tenants 
of  imagination.  Nature  will  keep  up  the 
supply  of  what  are  called  hard-headed  peo 
ple  without  our  help,  and,  if  it  come  to 
that,  there  are  other  as  good  uses  for  heads 
as  at  the  end  of  battering  rams. 

I  know  that  there  are  many  excellent  peo 
ple  who  object  to  the  reading  of  novels  as  a 
waste  of  time,  if  not  as  otherwise  harmful. 
But  I  think  they  are  trying  to  outwit  nature, 
who  is  sure  to  prove  cunninger  than  they. 
Look  at  children.  One  boy  shall  want  a 
chest  of  tools,  and  one  a  book,  and  of  those 
who  want  books  one  shall  ask  for  a  botany, 
another  for  a  romance.  They  will  be  sure 
to  get  what  they  want,  and  we  are  doing  a 
grave  wrong  to  their  morals  by  driving  them 
to  do  things  on  the  sly,  to  steal  that  food 
which  their  constitution  craves  and  which 
is  wholesome  for  them,  instead  of  having  it 


130  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

freely  and  frankly  given  them  as  the  wisest 
possible  diet.  If  we  cannot  make  a  silk 
purse  out  of  a  sow's  ear,  so  neither  can  we 
hope  to  succeed  with  the  opposite  experiment. 
But  we  may  spoil  the  silk  for  its  legitimate 
uses.  I  can  conceive  of  no  healthier  reading 
for  a  boy,  or  girl  either,  than  Scott's  novels, 
or  Cooper's,  to  speak  only  of  the  dead.  I 
have  found  them  very  good  reading  at  least 
for  one  young  man,  for  one  middle-aged  man, 
and  for  one  who  is  growing  old.  No,  no  — 
banish  the  Antiquary,  banish  Leather  Stock 
ing,  and  banish  all  the  world !  Let  us  not 
go  about  to  make  life  duller  than  it  is. 

But  I  must  shut  the  doors  of  my  imagi 
nary  library  or  I  shall  never  end.  It  is  left 
for  me  to  say  a  few  words  of  cordial  acknowl 
edgment  to  Mr.  Fitz  for  his  judicious  and 
generous  gift.  I  have  great  pleasure  in  be 
lieving  that  the  custom  of  giving  away  money 
during  their  lifetime  (and  there  is  nothing 
harder  for  most  men  to  part  with,  except 
prejudice)  is  more  common  with  Americans 
than  with  any  other  people.  It  is  a  still 
greater  pleasure  to  see  that  the  favorite 
direction  of  their  beneficence  is  towards  the 
founding  of  colleges  and  libraries.  My  ob 
servation  has  led  me  to  believe  that  there  is 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  131 

no  country  in  which  wealth  is  so  sensible  of 
its  obligations  as  our  own.  And,  as  most  of 
our  rich  men  have  risen  from  the  ranks,  may 
we  not  fairly  attribute  this  sympathy  with 
their  kind  to  the  benign  influence  of  democ 
racy  rightly  understood?  My  dear  and 
honored  friend,  George  William  Curtis,  told 
me  that  he  was  sitting  in  front  of  the  late 
Mr.  Ezra  Cornell  in  a  convention,  where  one 
of  the  speakers  made  a  Latin  quotation. 
Mr.  Cornell  leaned  forward  and  asked  for  a 
translation  of  it,  which  Mr.  Curtis  gave  him. 
Mr.  Cornell  thanked  him,  and  added,  "  If 
I  can  help  it,  no  young  man  shall  grow  up 
in  New  York  hereafter  without  the  chance, 
at  least,  of  knowing  what  a  Latin  quotation 
means  when  he  hears  it."  This  was  the 
germ  of  Cornell  University,  and  it  found 
food  for  its  roots  in  that  sympathy  and 
thoughtfulness  for  others  of  which  I  just 
spoke.  This  is  the  healthy  side  of  that 
good  nature  which  democracy  tends  to  fos 
ter,  and  which  is  so  often  harmful  when  it 
has  its  root  in  indolence  or  indifference ; 
especially  harmful  where  our  public  affairs 
are  concerned,  and  where  it  is  easiest,  be 
cause  there  we  are  giving  away  what  belongs 
to  other  people.  It  should  be  said,  how- 


132  BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES. 

ever,  that  in  this  country  it  is  as  laudably 
easy  to  procure  signatures  to  a  subscription 
paper  as  it  is  shamefully  so  to  obtain  them 
for  certificates  of  character  and  recommen 
dations  to  office.  And  is  not  this  public 
spirit  a  national  evolution  from  that  frame 
of  mind  in  which  New  England  was  colo 
nized,  and  which  found  expression  in  these 
grave  words  of  Robinson  and  Brewster : 
"  We  are  knit  together  as  a  body  in  a  most 
strict  and  sacred  bond  and  covenant  of  the 
Lord,  of  the  violation  of  which  we  make 
great  conscience,  and  by  virtue  whereof  we 
hold  ourselves  strictly  tied  to  all  care  of 
each  other's  good,  and  of  the  whole."  Let 
us  never  forget  the  deep  and  solemn  import 
of  these  words.  The  problem  before  us  is 
to  make  a  whole  of  our  many  discordant 
parts,  our  many  foreign  elements,  and  I 
know  of  no  way  in  which  this  can  better  be 
done  than  by  providing  a  common  system  of 
education  and  a  common  door  of  access  to 
the  best  books  by  which  that  education  may 
be  continued,  broadened,  and  made  fruitful. 
For  it  is  certain  that,  whatever  we  do  or 
leave  undone,  those  discordant  parts  and 
foreign  elements  are  to  be,  whether  we  will 
or  no,  members  of  that  body  which  Robinson 


BOOKS  AND  LIBRARIES.  133 

and  Brewster  had  in  mind,  bone  of  our  bone, 
and  flesh  of  our  flesh,  for  good  or  ill.  I  am 
happy  in  believing  that  democracy  has 
enough  vigor  of  constitution  to  assimilate 
these  seemingly  indigestible  morsels  and 
transmute  them  into  strength  of  muscle  and 
symmetry  of  limb. 

There  is  no  way  in  which  a  man  can  build 
so  secure  and  lasting  a  monument  for  him 
self  as  in  a  public  library.  Upon  that  he 
may  confidently  allow  "  Resurgam "  to  be 
carved,  for,  through  his  good  deed,  he  will 
rise  again  in  the  grateful  remembrance  and 
in  the  lifted  and  broadened  minds  and  for 
tified  characters  of  generation  after  genera 
tion.  The  pyramids  may  forget  their  build 
ers,  but  memorials  such  as  this  have  longer 
memories. 

Mr.  Fitz  has  done  his  part  in  providing 
your  library  with  a  dwelling.  It  will  be  for 
the  citizens  of  Chelsea  to  provide  it  with 
worthy  habitants.  So  shall  they,  too,  have 
a  share  in  the  noble  eulogy  of  the  ancient 
wise  man:  "The  teachers  shall  shine  as 
the  firmament,  and  they  that  turn  many  to 
righteousness  as  the  stars  forever  and  ever." 


WORDSWORTH. 


ADDRESS  AS  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  WORDSWORTH   SOCIETY, 
10  MAY,  1884. 


WORDSWORTH. 


IN  an  early  volume  of  the  "  Philosophical 
Transactions"  there  is  a  paper  concerning 
"  A  certain  kind  of  lead  found  in  Germany 
proper  for  Essays."  That  it  may  have  been 
first  found  in  Germany  I  shall  not  question, 
but  deposits  of  this  depressing  mineral  have 
been  discovered  since  in  other  countries  also, 
and  we  are  all  of  us  more  or  less  familiar  with 
its  presence  in  the  essay,  —  nowhere  more 
than  when  this  takes  the  shape  of  a  critical 
dissertation  on  some  favorite  poet.  Is  this, 
then,  what  poets  are  good  for,  that  we  may 
darken  them  with  our  elucidations,  or  bury 
them  out  of  sight  under  the  gathering  silt  of 
our  comments?  Must  we,  then,  peep  and 
botanize  on  the  rose  of  dawn  or  the  passion 
flower  of  sunset  ?  I  should  rather  take  the 
counsel  of  a  great  poet,  the  commentaries  on 
whom  already  make  a  library  in  themselves, 
and  say,  — 

State  content!,  umana  gente,  al  gut  a, 


138  WORDSWORTH. 

be  satisfied  if  poetry  be  delightful,  or  help 
ful,  or  inspiring,  or  all  these  together,  but 
do  not  consider  too  nicely  why  it  is  so. 

I  would  not  have  you  suppose  that  I  am 
glancing  covertly  at  what  others,  from  Cole 
ridge  down,  have  written  of  Wordsworth. 
I  have  read  them,  including  a  recent  very 
suggestive  contribution  of  Mr.  Swinburne, 
with  no  other  sense  of  dissatisfaction  than 
that  which  springs  from  "  desiring  this  man's 
art  and  that  man's  scope."  No,  I  am  think 
ing  only  that  whatever  can  be  profitably  or 
unprofitably  said  of  him  has  been  already 
said,  and  that  what  is  said  for  the  mere  sake 
of  saying  it  is  not  worth  saying  at  all.  More 
over,  I  myself  have  said  of  him  what  I 
thought  good  more  than  twenty  years  ago.1 
It  is  as  wearisome  to  repeat  one's  self  as  it 
is  profitless  to  repeat  others,  and  that  we 
have  said  something,  however  inadequate  it 
may  afterwards  seem  to  us,  is  a  great  hin 
drance  to  saying  anything  better. 

The  only  function  that  a  president  of  the 
Wordsworth  Society  is  called  on  to  perform 
is  that  of  bidding  it  farewell  at  the  end  of 
his  year,  and  it  is  perhaps  fortunate  that  I 
have  not  had  the  leisure  to  prepare  a  dis- 

1  Among  my  Books. 


WORDSWORTH.  139 

course  so  deliberate  as  to  be  more  worthy  of 
the  occasion.  Without  unbroken  time  there 
can  be  no  consecutive  thought,  and  it  is  my 
misfortune  that  in  the  midst  of  a  reflection 
or  of  a  sentence  I  am  liable  to  be  called 
away  by  the  bell  of  private  or  public  duty. 
Even  had  I  been  able  to  prepare  something 
that  might  have  satisfied  me  better,  I  should 
still  be  at  the  disadvantage  of  following  next 
after  a  retiring  president l  who  always  has 
the  art  of  saying  what  all  of  us  would  be 
glad  to  say  if  we  could,  and  who  in  his  ad 
dress  last  year  gave  us  what  seemed  to  me 
the  finished  model  of  what  such  a  perform 
ance  should  be. 

During  the  year  that  has  passed  since  our 
last  Annual  Meeting,  however  idle  the  rest 
of  us  may  have  been,  our  secretary  has  been 
fruitfully  busy,  and  has  given  us  two  more 
volumes  of  what  it  is  safe  to  say  will  be  the 
standard  and  definitive  edition  of  the  poet's 
works.  In  this,  the  chronological  arrange 
ment  of  the  several  poems,  and  still  more, 
the  record  in  the  margin  of  the  author's  cor 
rections  or  repentances  (pentimenti,  as  the 
Italians  prettily  call  them),  furnish  us  with  a 
kind  of  self-registering  instrument  of  the  ex- 

1  Mr.  Matthew  Arnold. 


140  WORDS  WORTH. 

actest  kind  by  which  to  note,  if  not  always 
the  growth  of  his  mind,  yet  certainly  the 
gradual  clarification  of  his  taste,  and  the 
somewhat  toilsome  education  of  his  ear.  It 
is  plain  that  with  Wordsworth,  more  than 
with  most  poets,  poetry  was  an  art,  —  an  art, 
too,  rather  painfully  acquired  by  one  who 
was  endowed  by  nature  with  more  of  the  vis 
ion  than  of  the  faculty  divine.  Some  of  the 
more  important  omissions,  especially,  seem 
silently  to  indicate  changes  of  opinion, 
though  oftener,  it  may  be  suspected,  of 
mood,  or  merely  a  shifting  of  the  point  of 
view,  the  natural  consequence  of  a  change 
for  the  better  in  his  own  material  condition. 
One  result  of  this  marshalling  of  the 
poems  by  the  natural  sequence  of  date  is 
the  conviction  that,  whatever  modifications 
Wordsworth's  ideas  concerning  certain  so 
cial  and  political  questions  may  have  un 
dergone,  these  modifications  had  not  their 
origin  in  inconsiderate  choice,  or  in  any 
seduction  of  personal  motive,  but  were  the 
natural  and  unconscious  outcome  of  en 
larged  experience,  and  of  more  profound 
reflection  upon  it.  I  see  no  reason  to  think 
that  he  ever  swerved  from  his  early  faith  in 
the  beneficence  of  freedom,  but  rather  that 


WORDSWORTH.  141 

he  learned  the  necessity  of  defining  more 
exactly  in  what  freedom  consisted,  and  the 
conditions,  whether  of  time  or  place,  under 
which  alone  it  can  be  beneficent,  of  insisting 
that  it  must  be  an  evolution  and  not  a  man 
ufacture,  and  that  it  should  coordinate  itself 
with  the  prior  claims  of  society  and  civiliza 
tion.  The  process  in  his  mind  was  the  or 
dinary  crystallization  of  sentiment  hitherto 
swimming  in  vague  solution,  and  now  precip 
itated  in  principles.  He  had  made  the  in 
evitable  discovery  that  comes  with  years,  of 
how  much  harder  it  is  to  do  than  to  see  what 
't  were  good  to  do,  and  grew  content  to  build 
the  poor  man's  cottage,  since  the  means  did 
not  exist  of  building  the  prince's  palace  he 
had  dreamed.  It  is  noticeable  how  many  of 
his  earlier  poems  turn  upon  the  sufferings  of 
the  poor  from  the  injustice  of  man  or  the 
unnatural  organization  of  society.  He  him 
self  had  been  the  victim  of  an  abuse  of  the 
power  that  rank  and  wealth  sometimes  put 
into  the  hands  of  unworthy  men,  and  had 
believed  in  political  methods,  both  for  rem 
edy  and  prevention.  He  had  believed  also 
in  the  possibility  of  a  gregarious  regener 
ation  of  man  by  sudden  and  sharp,  if  need 
were  by  revolutionary  expedients,  like  those 


142  WORDSWORTH. 

impromptu  conversions  of  the  inhabitants  of 
a  city  from  Christ  to  Mahomet,  or  back 
again,  according  to  the  creed  of  their  con 
queror,  of  which  we  read  in  medieval  ro 
mances.  He  had  fancied  that  the  laws  of 
the  universe  would  curtsy  to  the  resolves 
of  the  National  Convention.  He  had  seen 
this  hope  utterly  baffled  and  confuted,  as  it 
seemed,  by  events  in  France,  by  events  that 
had  occurred,  too,  in  the  logical  sequence 
foretold  by  students  of  history.  He  had 
been  convinced,  perhaps  against  his  will, 
that  a  great  part  of  human  suffering  has  its 
root  in  the  nature  of  man,  and  not  in  that  of 
his  institutions.  Where  was  the  remedy  to 
be  found,  if  remedy  indeed  there  were  ?  It 
was  to  be  sought  at  least  only  in  an  im 
provement  wrought  by  those  moral  influ 
ences  that  build  up  and  buttress  the  personal 
character.  Goethe  taught  the  self  -  culture 
that  results  in  self-possession,  in  breadth  and 
impartiality  of  view,  and  in  equipoise  of 
mind;  Wordsworth  inculcated  that  self -de 
velopment  through  intercourse  with  man  and 
nature  which  leads  to  self-sufficingness,  self- 
sustainment,  and  equilibrium  of  character. 
It  was  the  individual  that  should  and  could 
be  leavened,  and  through  the  individual  the 


WORDS  WORTH.  143 

lump.  To  reverse  the  process  was  to  break 
the  continuity  of  history  and  to  wrestle  with 
the  angel  of  destiny. 

And  for  one  of  the  most  powerfully  effec 
tive  of  the  influences  for  which  he  was  seek 
ing,  where  should  he  look  if  not  to  Reli 
gion?  The  sublimities  and  amenities  of 
outward  nature  might  suffice  for  William 
Wordsworth,  might  for  him  have  almost 
filled  the  place  of  a  liberal  education  ;  but 
they  elevate,  teach,  and  above  all  console 
the  imaginative  and  solitary  only,  and  suf 
fice  to  him  who  already  suffices  to  himself. 
The  thought  of  a  god  vaguely  and  vapor- 
ously  dispersed  throughout  the  visible  crea 
tion,  the  conjecture  of  an  animating  princi 
ple  that  gives  to  the  sunset  its  splendors,  its 
passion  to  the  storm,  to  cloud  and  wind  their 
sympathy  of  form  and  movement,  that  sus 
tains  the  faith  of  the  crag  in  its  forlorn  en 
durance,  and  of  the  harebell  in  the  slender 
security  of  its  stem,  may  inspire  or  soothe, 
console  or  fortify,  the  man  whose  physical 
and  mental  fibre  is  so  sensitive  that,  like 
the  spectroscope,  it  can  both  feel  and  record 
these  impalpable  impulses  and  impressions, 
these  impersonal  vibrations  of  identity  be 
tween  the  fragmentary  life  that  is  in  him- 


144  WORDS  WORTH. 

self  and  the  larger  life  of  the  universe 
whereof  he  is  a  particle.  Such  supersensual 
emotions  might  help  to  make  a  poem,  but 
they  would  not  make  a  man,  still  more  a  so 
cial  being.  Absorption  in  the  whole  would 
not  tend  to  that  development  of  the  individ 
ual  which  was  the  corner-stone  of  Words 
worth's  edifice. 

That  instinct  in  man  which  leads  him  to 
fashion  a  god  in  his  own  image,  why  may  it 
not  be  an  instinct  as  natural  and  wholesome 
as  any  other  ?  And  it  is  not  only  God  that 
this  instinct  embodies  and  personifies,  but 
every  profounder  abstract  conception,  every 
less  selfish  devotion  of  which  man  is  capa 
ble.  Was  it,  think  you,  of  a  tiny  crooked 
outline  on  the  map,  of  so  many  square  miles 
of  earth,  or  of  Hume  and  Smollett's  History 
that  Nelson  was  thinking  when  he  dictated 
what  are  perhaps  the  most  inspiring  words 
ever  uttered  by  an  Englishman  to  English 
men  ?  Surely  it  was  something  in  woman's 
shape  that  rose  before  him  with  all  the  po 
tent  charm  of  noble  impulsion  that  is  hers 
as  much  through  her  weakness  as  her 
strength.  And  the  features  of  that  divine 
apparition,  had  they  not  been  painted  in 
every  attitude  of  their  changeful  beauty  by 
Romney  ? 


WORDSWORTH.  145 

Coarse  and  rudimentary  as  this  instinct  is 
in  the  savage,  it  is  sublimed  and  etherealized 
in  the  profoundly  spiritual  imagination  of 
Dante,  which  yet  is  forced  to  admit  the  le 
gitimacy  of  its  operation.  Beatrice  tells 
him  — 

Thus  to  your  minds  it  needful  is  to  speak, 
Because  through  sense  alone  they  understand  : 
It  is  for  this  that  Scripture  condescends 
Unto  your  faculties  and  feet  and  hands, 
To  God  attributes,  meaning  something  else. 

And  in  what  I  think  to  be  the  sublimest 
reach  to  which  poetry  has  risen,  the  conclu 
sion  of  the  "  Paradiso,"  Dante  tells  us  that 
within  the  three  whirling  rings  of  vari-col- 
ored  light  that  symbolize  the  wisdom,  the 
power,  and  the  love  of  God,  he  seems  to  see 
the  image  of  man. 

Wordsworth  would  appear  to  have  been 
convinced  that  this  Something  deeply  inter 
fused,  this  pervading  but  illusive  intimation, 
of  which  he  was  dimly  conscious,  and  that 
only  by  flashes,  could  never  serve  the  ordi 
nary  man,  who  was  in  no  way  and  at  no 
time  conscious  of  it,  as  motive,  as  judge,  and 
more  than  all  as  consoler,  —  could  never  fill 
the  place  of  the  Good  Shepherd.  Observa 
tion  convinced  him  that  what  are  called  the 


146  WORDS  WORTH. 

safeguards  of  society  are  the  staff  also  of 
the  individual  members  of  it ;  that  tradition, 
habitude,  and  heredity  are  great  forces, 
whether  for  impulse  or  restraint.  He  had 
pondered  a  pregnant  phrase  of  the  poet 
Daniel,  where  he  calls  religion  "  mother  of 
Form  and  Fear."  A  growing  conviction  of 
its  profound  truth  turned  his  mind  towards 
the  Church  as  the  embodiment  of  the  most 
potent  of  all  traditions,  and  to  her  public 
offices  as  the  expression  of  the  most  socially 
humanizing  of  all  habitudes.  It  was  no 
empty  formalism  that  could  have  satisfied 
his  conception,  but  rather  that  "  Ideal  Form, 
the  universal  mould,"  that  forma  mentis 
ceterna  which  has  given  shape  and  expres 
sion  to  the  fears  and  hopes  and  aspirations 
of  mankind.  And  what  he  understood  by 
Fear  is  perhaps  shadowed  forth  in  the  "  Ode 
to  Duty,"  in  which  he  speaks  to  us  out  of  an 
ampler  ether  than  in  any  other  of  his  poems, 
and  which  may  safely  "challenge  insolent 
Greece  and  haughty  Rome  "for  a  compari 
son  either  in  kind  or  degree. 

I  ought  not  to  detain  you  longer  from  the 
interesting  papers,  the  reading  of  which  has 
been  promised  for  this  meeting.  No  mem 
ber  of  this  Society  would  admit  that  its  ex- 


WORDSWORTH.  147 

istence  was  needed  to  keep  alive  an  interest 
in  the  poet,  or  to  promote  the  study  of  his 
works.  But  I  think  we  should  all  consent 
that  there  could  be  no  better  reason  for  its 
being  than  the  fact  that  it  elicits  an  utter 
ance  of  the  impression  made  by  his  poetry 
on  many  different  minds  looking  at  him  from 
as  many  different  points  of  view.  That  he 
should  have  a  special  meaning  for  every  one 
in  an  audience  so  various  in  temperament 
and  character  might  well  induce  us  to  credit 
him  with  a  wider  range  of  sympathies  and 
greater  breadth  of  thought  than  each  of  us 
separately  would,  perhaps,  be  ready  to  admit. 

But  though  reluctant  to  occupy  more  than 
my  fair  share  of  your  time,  the  occasion 
tempts  me  irresistibly  to  add  a  few  more 
words  of  general  criticism.  It  has  seemed 
to  me  that  Wordsworth  has  too  commonly 
been  estimated  rather  as  philosopher  or 
teacher  than  as  poet.  The  value  of  what  he 
said  has  had  more  influence  with  the  jury 
than  the  way  in  which  he  said  it.  There 
are  various  methods  of  criticism,  but  I  think 
we  should  all  agree  that  literary  work  is  to 
be  judged  from  the  purely  literary  point  of 
view. 

If  it  be  one  of  the  baser  consolations,  it 


148  WORDSWORTH. 

is  also  one  of  the  most  disheartening  con 
comitants  of  long  life,  that  we  get  used  to 
everything.  Two  things,  perhaps,  retain 
their  freshness  more  perdurably  than  the 
rest,  —  the  return  of  spring,  and  the  more 
poignant  utterances  of  the  poets.  And 
here,  I  think,  Wordsworth  holds  his  own 
with  the  best.  But  Mr.  Arnold's  volume  of 
selections  from  him  suggests  a  question  of 
some  interest,  for  the  Wordsworth  Society 
of  special  interest,  —  How  much  of  his 
poetry  is  likely  to  be  a  permanent  posses 
sion?  The  answer  to  this  question  is  in 
volved  in  the  answer  to  a  question  of  wider 
bearing,  —  What  are  the  conditions  of  per 
manence?  Immediate  or  contemporaneous 
recognition  is  certainly  not  dominant  among 
them,  or  Cowley  would  still  be  popular,  — 
Cowley,  to  whom  the  Muse  gave  every  gift 
but  one,  the  gift  of  the  unexpected  and  in 
evitable  word.  Nor  can  mere  originality 
assure  the  interest  of  posterity,  else  why  are 
Chaucer  and  Gray  familiar,  while  Donne, 
one  of  the  subtlest  and  most  self-irradiating 
minds  that  ever  sought  an  outlet  in  verse,  is 
known  only  to  the  few  ?  "  Since  Virgil  there 
have  been  at  most  but  four  cosmopolitan 
authors,  —  Dante,  Cervantes,  Shakespeare, 


WORDS  WORTH.  149 

and  Goethe.  These  have  stood  the  supreme 
test  of  being  translated  into  all  tongues,  be 
cause  the  large  humanity  of  their  theme,  and 
of  their  handling  of  it,  needed  translation 
into  none.  Calderon  is  a  greater  poet  than 
Goethe,  but  even  in  the  most  masterly  trans 
lation  he  retains  still  a  Spanish  accent,  and 
is  accordingly  interned  (if  I  may  Anglicize 
a  French  word)  in  that  provincialism  which 
we  call  nationality. 

When  one  reads  what  has  been  written 
about  Wordsworth,  one  cannot  fail  to  be 
struck  by  the  predominance  of  the  personal 
equation  in  the  estimate  of  his  value,  and 
when  we  consider  his  claim  to  universal  rec 
ognition,  it  would  not  be  wise  to  overlook 
the  rare  quality  of  the  minds  that  he  has 
most  attracted  and  influenced.  If  the  char 
acter  of  the  constituency  may  be  taken  as 
the  measure  of  the  representative,  there  can 
be  no  doubt  that,  by  his  privilege  of  inter 
esting  the  highest  and  purest  order  of  intel 
lect,  Wordsworth  must  be  set  apart  from  the 
other  poets,  his  contemporaries,  if  not  above 
them.  And  yet  we  must  qualify  this  praise 
by  the  admission  that  he  continues  to  be  in 
sular  ;  that  he  makes  no  conquests  beyond 
the  boundaries  of  his  mother-tongue ;  that, 


150  WORDSWORTH. 

more  than  perhaps  any  other  poet  of  equal 
endowment,  he  is  great  and  surprising  in 
passages  and  ejaculations.  In  these  he  truly 

Is  happy  as  a  lover,  and  attired 

In  sudden  brightness,  like  a  man  inspired ; 

in  these  he  loses  himself,  as  Sir  Thomas 
Browne  would  say,  in  an  O,  altitudo^  where 
his  muse  is  indeed  a  muse  of  fire,  that  can 
ascend,  if  not  to  the  highest  heaven  of  in 
vention,  yet  to  the  supremest  height  of  im 
personal  utterance.  Then,  like  Elias  the 
prophet,  "  he  stands  up  as  fire,  and  his  word 
burns  like  a  lamp."  But  too  often,  when 
left  to  his  own  resources,  and  to  the  con 
scientious  performance  of  the  duty  laid  upon 
him  to  be  a  great  poet  quand  meme,  he 
seems  diligently  intent  on  producing  fire  by 
the  primitive  method  of  rubbing  the  dry 
sticks  of  his  blank  verse  one  against  the 
other,  while  we  stand  in  shivering  expecta 
tion  of  the  flame  that  never  comes.  In  his 
truly  inspired  and  inspiring  passages  it  is 
remarkable  also  that  he  is  most  unlike  his 
ordinary  self,  least  in  accordance  with  his 
own  theories  of  the  nature  of  poetic  expres 
sion.  When  at  his  best,  he  startles  and  way 
lays  as  only  genius  can,  but  is  furthest  from 


WORDSWORTH.  151 

that  equanimity  of  conscious  and  constantly 
indwelling  power  that  is  the  characteristic 
note  of  the  greatest  work.  If  Wordsworth 
be  judged  by  the  ex  ungue  leonem  standard, 
by  passages,  or  by  a  dozen  single  poems,  no 
one  capable  of  forming  an  opinion  would 
hesitate  to  pronounce  him,  not  only  a  great 
poet,  but  among  the  greatest,  convinced  in 
the  one  case  by  the  style,  and  in  both  by  the 
force  that  radiates  from  him,  by  the  stimulus 
he  sends  kindling  through  every  fibre  of  the 
intellect  and  of  the  imagination.  At  the 
same  time  there  is  no  admittedly  great  poet 
in  placing  whom  we  are  forced  to  acknowl 
edge  so  many  limitations  and  to  make  so 
many  concessions. 

Even  as  a  teacher  he  is  often  too  much  of 
a  pedagogue,  and  is  apt  to  forget  that  poetry 
instructs  not  by  precept  and  inculcation,  but 
by  hints  and  indirections  and  suggestions, 
by  inducing  a  mood  rather  than  by  enforcing 
a  principle  or  a  moral.  He  sometimes  im 
presses  our  fancy  with  the  image  of  a  school 
master  whose  class-room  commands  an  un 
rivalled  prospect  of  cloud  and  mountain,  of 
all  the  pomp  and  prodigality  of  heaven  and 
earth.  From  time  to  time  he  calls  his  pupils 
to  the  window,  and  makes  them  see  what, 


1 52  WORDS  WOR  Tff, 

without  the  finer  intuition  of  his  eyes,  they 
had  never  seen  ;  makes  them  feel  what,  with 
out  the  sympathy  of  his  more  penetrating 
sentiment,  they  had  never  felt.  It  seems  the 
revelation  of  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth, 
and  to  contain  in  itself  its  own  justification. 
Then  suddenly  recollecting  his  duty,  he  shuts 
the  window,  calls  them  back  to  their  tasks, 
and  is  equally  well  pleased  and  more  discur 
sive  in  enforcing  on  them  the  truth  that  the 
moral  of  all  this  is  that  in  order  to  be  happy 
they  must  be  virtuous.  If  the  total  absence 
of  any  sense  of  humor  had  the  advantage 
sometimes  of  making  Wordsworth  sublimely 
unconscious,  it  quite  as  often  made  him  so  to 
his  loss. 

In  his  noblest  utterances  man  is  absent 
except  as  the  antithesis  that  gives  a  sharper 
emphasis  to  nature.  The  greatest  poets,  I 
think,  have  found  man  more  interesting  than 
nature,  have  considered  nature  as  no  more 
than  the  necessary  scenery,  artistically  harm 
ful  if  too  pompous  or  obtrusive,  before  which 
man  acts  his  tragi-comedy  of  life.  This  pe 
culiarity  of  Wordsworth  results  naturally 
from  the  fact  that  he  had  no  dramatic  power, 
and  of  narrative  power  next  to  none.  If  he 
tell  us  a  story,  it  is  because  it  gives  him  the 


WORDS  WORTH.  153 

chance  to  tell  us  something  else,  and  to  him 
of  more  importance.  In  Scott's  narrative 
poems  the  scenery  is  accessary  and  subor 
dinate.  It  is  a  picturesque  background  to 
his  figures,  a  landscape  through  which  the 
action  rushes  like  a  torrent,  catching  a  hint 
of  color  perhaps  from  rock  or  tree,  but  never 
any  image  so  distinct  that  it  tempts  us  aside 
to  reverie  or  meditation.  With  Wordsworth 
the  personages  are  apt  to  be  lost  in  the  land 
scape,  or  kept  waiting  idly  while  the  poet 
muses  on  its  deeper  suggestions.  And  he 
has  no  sense  of  proportion,  no  instinct  of 
choice  and  discrimination.  All  his  thoughts 
and  emotions  and  sensations  are  of  equal 
value  in  his  eyes  because  they  are  his,  and 
he  gives  us  methodically  and  conscientiously 
all  he  can,  and  not  that  only  which  he  can 
not  help  giving  because  it  must  and  will  be 
said.  One  might  apply  to  him  what  Miss 
Skeggs  said  of  Dr.  Burdock,  that  "  he  sel 
dom  leaves  anything  out,  as  he  writes  only 
for  his  own  amusement."  There  is  no  limit 
to  his  —  let  us  call  it  fecundity.  He  was 
dimly  conscious  of  this,  and  turned  by  a 
kind  of  instinct,  I  suspect,  to  the  sonnet,  be 
cause  its  form  forced  boundaries  upon  him, 
and  put  him  under  bonds  to  hold  his  peace 


154  WORDSWORTH. 

at  the  end  of  the  fourteenth  line.  Yet  even 
here  nature  would  out,  and  the  oft  recurring 
same  subject  continued  lures  the  nun  from 
her  cell  to  the  convent  parlor,  and  tempts 
the  student  to  make  a  pulpit  of  his  pensive 
citadel.  The  hour-glass  is  there,  to  be  sure, 
with  its  lapsing  admonition,  but  it  reminds 
the  preacher  only  that  it  can  be  turned. 

I  have  said  that  Wordsworth  was  insular, 
but,  more  than  this,  there  is  also  something 
local,  I  might  say  parochial,  in  his  choice  of 
subject  and  tone  of  thought.  I  am  not  sure 
that  what  is  called  philosophical  poetry  ever 
appeals  to  more  than  a  very  limited  circle  of 
minds,  though  to  them  it  appeals  with  an 
intimate  power  that  makes  them  fanatical 
in  their  preference.  Perhaps  none  of  those 
whom  I  have  called  universal  poets  (unless 
it  be  Dante)  calls  out  this  fanaticism,  for 
they  do  not  need  it,  fanaticism  being  a  sure 
token  either  of  weakness  in  numbers  or  of 
weakness  in  argument.  The  greatest  poets 
interest  the  passions  of  men  no  less  than 
their  intelligence,  and  are  more  concerned 
with  the  secondary  than  the  primal  sym 
pathies,  with  the  concrete  than  with  the  ab 
stract. 

But  I  have  played  the  advocatus  diaboli 


WORDS  WORTH.  155 

long  enough.  I  come  back  to  the  main 
question  from  which  I  set  out.  Will  Words 
worth  survive,  as  Lucretius  survives,  through 
the  splendor  of  certain  sunbursts  of  imagi 
nation  refusing  for  a  passionate  moment  to 
be  subdued  by  the  unwilling  material  in 
which  it  is  forced  to  work,  while  that  mate 
rial  takes  fire  in  the  working  as  it  can  and 
wdll  only  in  the  hands  of  genius,  as  it  cannot 
and  will  not,  for  example,  in  the  hands  of 
Dr.  Akenside  ?  Is  he  to  be  known  a  cen 
tury  hence  as  the  author  of  remarkable  pas 
sages?  Certainly  a  great  part  of  him  will 
perish,  not,  as  Ben  Jonson  said  of  Donne, 
for  want  of  understanding,  but  because  too 
easily  understood.  His  teaching,  whatever 
it  was,  is  part  of  the  air  we  breathe,  and  has 
lost  that  charm  of  exclusion  and  privilege 
that  kindled  and  kept  alive  the  zeal  of  his 
acolytes  while  it  was  still  sectarian,  or  even 
heretical.  But  he  has  that  surest  safeguard 
against  oblivion,  that  imperishable  incentive 
to  curiosity  and  interest  that  belongs  to  all 
original  minds.  His  finest  utterances  do 
not  merely  nestle  in  the  ear  by  virtue  of 
their  music,  but  in  the  soul  and  life,  by  vir 
tue  of  their  meaning.  One  would  be  slow 
to  say  that  his  general  outfit  as  poet  was  so 


156  WORDS  WORTH. 

complete  as  that  of  Dryden,  but  that  he 
habitually  dwelt  in  a  diviner  air,  and  alone 
of  modern  poets  renewed  and  justified  the 
earlier  faith  that  made  poet  and  prophet 
interchangeable  terms.  Surely  he  was  not 
an  artist  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  word ; 
neither  was  Isaiah ;  but  he  had  a  rarer  gift, 
the  capability  of  being  greatly  inspired.  Pop 
ular,  let  us  admit,  he  can  never  be ;  but  as 
in  Catholic  countries  men  go  for  a  time  into 
retreat  from  the  importunate  dissonances 
of  life  to  collect  their  better  selves  again  by 
communion  with  things  that  are  heavenly, 
and  therefore  eternal,  so  this  Chartreuse  of 
Wordsworth,  dedicated  to  the  Genius  of  Sol 
itude,  will  allure  to  its  imperturbable  calm 
the  finer  natures  and  the  more  highly  tem 
pered  intellects  of  every  generation,  so  long 
as  man  has  any  intuition  of  what  is  most  sa 
cred  in  his  own  emotions  and  sympathies,  or 
of  whatever  in  outward  nature  is  most  capa 
ble  of  awakening  them  and  making  them 
operative,  whether  to  console  or  strengthen. 
And  over  the  entrance-gate  to  that  purify 
ing  seclusion  shall  be  inscribed,  — 

Minds  innocent  and  quiet  take 
This  for  an  hermitage. 


DON  QUIXOTE. 


NOTES  READ  AT  THE  WORKINGMEN'S  COLLEGE,  GREAT 
ORMOND  STREET,  LONDON. 


DON  QUIXOTE. 


IN  every  literature  which  can  be  in  any 
sense  called  national  there  is  a  flavor  of  the 
soil  from  which  it  sprang,  in  which  it  grew, 
and  from  which  its  roots  drew  nourishment. 
This  flavor,  at  first,  perhaps,  the  cause  of 
distaste,  gives  a  peculiar  relish  when  we 
have  once  learned  to  like  it.  It  is  a  limi 
tation,  no  doubt,  and  when  artificially  com 
municated,  or  in  excess,  incurs  the  reproach 
of  provincialism,  just  as  there  are  certain 
national  dishes  that  are  repugnant  to  every 
foreign  palate.  But  it  has  the  advantage 
of  giving  even  to  second-class  writers  in  a 
foreign  language  that  strangeness  which  in 
our  own  tongue  is  possible  only  to  original 
ity  either  of  thought  or  style.  When  this 
savor  of  nationality  is  combined  with  original 
genius,  as  in  such  a  writer  as  Calderon  for 
example,  the  charm  is  incalculably  height 
ened. 

Spanish  literature,  if  it  have  nothing  that 


160  DON   QUIXOTE. 

for  height  and  depth  can  be  compared  with 
the  "  Divina  Commedia"  of  Dante  (as  in 
deed  what  other  modern  literature  has  ?),  is 
rich  in  works  that  will  repay  study,  and 
evolved  itself  by  natural  processes  out  of 
the  native  genius,  the  history,  and  the  min 
gled  races  of  the  country  more  evidently, 
perhaps,  than  that  of  any  other  modern  peo 
ple.  It  was  of  course  more  or  less  modified 
from  time  to  time  by  foreign,  especially  by 
French,  influences  in  its  earlier  period,  by 
Italian  in  the  sixteenth  century,  and  in  later 
times  again  by  French  and  German  influ 
ences  more  or  less  plainly  marked,  but 
through  all  and  in  spite  of  all,  by  virtue  of 
the  vigor  of  its  native  impulse,  it  has  given 
an  essentially  Spanish  character  to  all  its 
productions.  Its  earliest  monument,  the 
"  Song  of  the  Cid,"  is  in  form  a  reproduction 
of  the  French  "  Chanson  de  Geste,"  a  song 
of  action  or  of  what  has  been  acted,  but  the 
spirit  which  animates  it  is  very  different 
from  that  which  animates  the  "  Song  of  Ro 
land,"  its  nearest  French  parallel  in  subject 
and  form.  The  Spanish  Romances,  very 
much  misrepresented  in  the  spirited  and 
facile  reproductions  of  Lockhart,  are  beyond 
question  the  most  original  and  fascinating 


DON  QUIXOTE.  161 

popular  poetry  of  which  we  know  anything. 
Their  influence  upon  the  form  of  Heine's 
verse  is  unmistakable.  In  the  Drama,  also, 
Spain  has  been  especially  abundant  and  in 
ventive.  She  has  supplied  all  Europe  with 
plots,  and  has  produced  at  least  one  drama 
tist  who  takes  natural  rank  with  the  greatest 
in  any  language  by  his  depth  of  imagination 
and  fertility  of  resource.  For  fascination 
of  style  and  profound  suggestion,  it  would 
be  hard  to  name  another  author  superior  to 
Calderon,  if  indeed  equal  to  him.  His  charm 
was  equally  felt  by  two  minds  as  unlike 
each  other  as  those  of  Goethe  and  Shelley. 
These  in  themselves  are  sufficient  achieve 
ments,  and  the  intellectual  life  of  a  nation 
could  maintain  itself  on  the  unearned  incre 
ment  of  these  without  further  addition  to 
its  resources.  But  Spain  has  also  had  the 
good  fortune  to  produce  one  book  which  by 
the  happiness  of  its  conception,  by  the  va 
riety  of  its  invention,  and  the  charm  of  its 
style,  has  been  adopted  into  the  literature  of 
mankind,  and  has  occupied  a  place  in  their 
affection  to  which  few  other  books  have  been 
admitted. 

"We  have  no  word  in  English  so  compre 
hensive  as  the  Dlchtung  of  the  Germans, 


162  DON   QUIXOTE. 

which  includes  every  exercise  of  the  creative 
faculty,  whether  in  the  line  of  pathos  or  hu 
mor,  whether  in  the  higher  region  of  imagi 
nation  or  on  the  lower  levels  of  fancy  where 
the  average  man  draws  easier  breath.  It  is 
about  a  work  whose  scene  lies  on  this  in 
ferior  plane,  but  whose  vividness  of  intui 
tion  and  breadth  of  treatment  rank  it  among 
the  highest  achievements  of  imaginative  lit 
erature,  that  I  shall  say  a  few  words  this 
evening,  and  I  trust  that  I  shall  see  nothing 
in  it  that  in  the  author's  intention,  at  least, 
is  not  honestly  to  be  found  there ;  certainly 
that  I  shall  not  pretend  to  see  anything 
which  others  have  professed  to  discover  there, 
but  to  which  nature  has  made  me  color 
blind. 

I  ask  your  attention  this  evening  not  to 
an  essay  on  "  Don  Quixote,"  still  less  to  an 
essay  on  Cervantes,  but  rather  to  a  few  illus 
trative  comments  on  his  one  immortal  book 
(drawn  almost  wholly  from  notes  written  on 
its  margin  in  repeated  readings),  which  may 
tend  to  throw  a  stronger  light  on  what  I 
shall  not  scruple  to  call  its  incomparable 
originality  both  as  a  conception  and  a  study 
of  character.  It  is  one  of  the  few  books 
that  can  lay  undisputed  claim  to  the  distinc- 


DON   QUIXOTE.  163 

tion  of  being  universal  and  cosmopolitan, 
equally  at  home  in  all  languages  and  wel 
come  to  all  kindreds  and  conditions  of  men ; 
a  human  book  in  the  fullest  sense  of  the 
word ;  a  kindly  book,  whether  we  take  that 
adjective  in  its  original  meaning  of  natural, 
or  in  its  present  acceptation,  which  would 
seem  to  imply  that  at  some  time  or  other, 
not  too  precisely  specified  in  history,  to  be 
kindly  and  to  be  natural  had  been  equiva 
lent  terms.  I  can  think  of  no  book  so  thor 
oughly  good-natured  and  good-humored,  and 
this  is  the  more  remarkable  because  it  shows 
that  the  optimism  of  its  author  had  survived 
more  misfortune  and  disenchantment  than 
have  fallen  to  the  lot  of  many  men,  even  the 
least  successful.  I  suspect  that  Cervantes, 
with  his  varied  experience,  maimed  at  the 
battle  of  Lepanto,  a  captive  in  Algiers, 
pinched  with  poverty  all  his  life,  and  writing 
his  great  book  in  a  debtor's  prison,  might 
have  formed  as  just  an  estimate  of  the  van 
ity  of  vanities  as  the  author  of  the  Book 
of  Ecclesiastes.  But  the  notion  of  Welt- 
schmerz,  or  the  misery  of  living  and  acting 
in  this  beautiful  world,  seems  never  to  have 
occurred  to  him,  or,  if  it  did,  never  to  have 
embittered  him.  Had  anybody  suggested 


164  DON  Q.U1XOTE. 

the  thought  to  him,  he  would  probably  have 
answered,  "  Well,  perhaps  it  is  not  the  best 
of  all  possible  worlds,  but  it  is  the  best  we 
have,  or  are  likely  to  get  in  my  time.  Had 
I  been  present  at  its  creation,  I  might,  per 
haps,  as  Alfonso  the  learned  thought  he 
might,  have  given  some  useful  advice  for  its 
improvement,  and,  were  I  consulted  even 
now,  could  suggest  some  amendments  in  my 
own  condition  therein.  But  after  all,  it  is 
not  a  bad  world,  as  worlds  go,  and  the 
wisest  plan,  if  the  luck  go  against  us,  is  to 
follow  the  advice  of  Durandarte  in  the  Cave 
of  Montesinos,  '  Patience,  and  shuffle  the 
cards.' ''  His  sense  of  humor  kept  his  nature 
sweet  and  fresh,  and  made  him  capable  of 
seeing  that  there  are  two  sides  to  every  ques 
tion,  even  to  a  question  in  which  his  own 
personal  interest  was  directly  involved.  In 
his  dedication  of  the  Second  Part  of  "  Don 
Quixote  "  to  the  Conde  de  Lemos,  written 
in  old  age  and  infirmity,  he  smiles  cheerfully 
on  Poverty  as  on  an  old  friend  and  life 
long  companion.  St.  Francis  could  not  have 
looked  with  more  benignity  on  her  whom  he 
chose,  as  Dante  tells  us,  for  his  bride. 

I  have  called  "  Don  Quixote  "  a  cosmo 
politan  book,  and  I  know  of  none  other  that 


DON   QUIXOTE.  165 

can  compete  with  it  in  this  respect  unless  it 
be  "Robinson  Crusoe."  But  "Don  Quix 
ote,"  if  less  verisimilar  as  a  narrative,  and 
I  am  not  sure  that  it  is,  appeals  to  far 
higher  qualities  of  mind  and  demands  a  far 
subtler  sense  of  appreciation  than  the  mas 
terpiece  of  Defoe.  If  the  latter  represent 
in  simplest  prose  what  interests  us  because 
it  might  happen  to  any  man,  the  other, 
while  seeming  never  to  leave  the  low  level 
of  fact  and  possibility,  constantly  suggests 
the  loftier  region  of  symbol,  and  sets  before 
us  that  eternal  contrast  between  the  ideal 
and  the  real,  between  the  world  as  it  might 
be  and  the  world  as  it  is,  between  the  fer 
vid  completeness  of  conception  and  the  chill 
inadequacy  of  fulfilment,  which  life  sooner 
or  later,  directly  or  indirectly,  forces  upon 
the  consciousness  of  every  man  who  is 
more  than  a  patent  digester.  There  is  a 
moral  in  "Don  Quixote,"  and  a  very  pro 
found  one,  whether  Cervantes  consciously 
put  it  there  or  not,  and  it  is  this :  that  who 
ever  quarrels  with  the  Nature  of  Things, 
wittingly  or  unwittingly,  is  certain  to  get 
the  worst  of  it.  The  great  difficulty  lies  in 
finding  out  what  the  Nature  of  Things  really 
and  perdurably  is,  and  the  great  wisdom, 


166  DON    QUIXOTE. 

after  we  have  made  this  discovery,  or  per 
suaded  ourselves  that  we  have  made  it.  is  in 
accommodating  our  lives  and  actions  to  it 
as  best  we  may  or  can.  And  yet,  though  all 
this  be  true,  there  is  another  and  deeper 
moral  in  the  book  than  this.  The  pathos 
which  underlies  its  seemingly  farcical  tur 
moil,1  the  tears  which  sometimes  tremble  un 
der  our  lids  after  its  most  poignant  touches 
of  humor,  the  sympathy  with  its  hero  which 
survives  all  his  most  ludicrous  defeats  and 
humiliations  and  is  only  deepened  by  them, 
the  feeling  that  he  is  after  all  the  one  noble 
and  heroic  figure  in  a  world  incapable  of 
comprehending  him,  and  to  whose  inhabi 
tants  he  is  distorted  and  caricatured  by  the 
crooked  panes  in  those  windows  of  custom 
and  convention  through  which  they  see  him, 
all  this  seems  to  hint  that  only  he  who  has 
the  imagination  to  conceive  and  the  courage 
to  attempt  a  trial  of  strength  with  what 

1  I  can  think  of  no  better  instance  to  show  how  thin  is 
the  partition  that  divides  humor  from  pathos  than  the 
lustration  of  the  two  vulgar  Laises  (distraidas  mozas) 
by  the  pure  imagination  of  Don  Quixote  (Part.  Prim, 
cap.  ii.).  The  sentiment  is  more  natural  and  truer  than 
that  which  Victor  Hugo  puts  into  the  mouth  of  Marion 
Delorme  when  she  tells  her  lover  that  "his  love  has 
given  her  back  her  virginity."  To  him  it  might,  but  it 
would  rather  have  reproached  her  with  the  loss  of  it. 


DON   QUIXOTE.  167 

foists  itself  on  our  senses  as  the  Order  of 
Nature  for  the  time  being  can  achieve  great 
results  or  kindle  the  cooperative  and  efficient 
enthusiasm  of  his  fellow -men.  The  Don 
Quixote  of  one  generation  may  live  to  hear 
himself  called  the  savior  of  society  by  the 
next.  How  exalted  was  Don  Quixote's  own 
conception  of  his  mission  is  clear  from  what 
is  said  of  his  first  sight  of  the  inn  (Part. 
Prim.  cap.  iii.),  that  "  it  was  as  if  he  had 
seen  a  star  which  guided  him  not  to  the  por 
tals,  but  to  the  fortress  of  his  redemption," 
where  the  allusion  were  too  daring  were  he 
not  persuaded  that  he  is  going  forth  to  re 
deem  the  world.  Cervantes,  of  course,  is 
not  so  much  speaking  in  his  own  person, 
as  telling  what  passed  in  the  mind  of  his 
hero. 

Am  I  forcing  upon  Cervantes  a  meaning 
alien  to  the  purpose  of  his  story  and  anach 
ronistic  to  the  age  in  which  he  lived  ?  I 
do  not  think  so,  and  if  I  err  I  do  so  in  good 
company.  I  admit  that  there  is  a  kind  of 
what  is  called  constructive  criticism,  which 
is  sometimes  pushed  so  far  beyond  its  proper 
limits  as  to  deserve  rather  the  name  of  de 
structive,  as  sometimes,  in  the  so-called  res 
toration  of  an  ancient  building,  the  mate- 


168  DON   QUIXOTE. 

rials  of  the  original  architect  are  used  in  the 
erection  of  a  new  edifice  of  which  he  had 
never  dreamed,  or,  if  he  had  dreamed  of 
it,  would  have  fancied  himself  the  victim  of 
some  horrible  nightmare.  I  would  not  will 
ingly  lay  myself  open  to  the  imputation  of 
applying  this  method  to  Cervantes,  and  at 
tribute  to  him  a  depth  of  intention  which, 
could  he  be  asked  about  it,  would  call  up 
in  his  eyes  the  meditative  smile  that  must 
habitually  have  flickered  there.  Spaniards 
have  not  been  wanting  who  protested  against 
what  they  consider  to  be  the  German  fashion 
of  interpreting  their  national  author.  Don 
Juan  Valera,  in  particular,  one  of  the  best 
of  contemporary  Spanish  men  of  letters, 
both  as  critic  and  novelist,  has  argued  the 
negative  side  of  the  question  with  force  and 
acumen  in  a  discourse  pronounced  on  his 
admission  to  the  Spanish  Academy.  But  I 
must  confess  that,  while  he  interested,  he 
did  not  convince  me.  I  could  quite  under 
stand  his  impatience  at  what  he  considered 
the  supersubtleties  of  interpretation  to  which 
our  Teutonic  cousins,  who  have  taught  uf 
so  much,  are  certainly  somewhat  prone.  We 
have  felt  it  ourselves  when  the  obvious 
meaning  of  Shakespeare  has  been  rewritten 


DON   QUIXOTE.  169 

into  Hegelese,  by  some  Doctor  of  Philosophy 
desperate  with  the  task  of  saying  something 
when  everything  had  been  already  said,  and 
eager  to  apply  his  new  theory  of  fog  as  an 
illuminating  medium.  But  I  no  not  think 
that  transcendental  criticism  can  be  charged 
with  indiscretion  in  the  case  of  "  Don  Quix 
ote."  After  reading  all  that  can  be  said 
against  the  justice  of  its  deductions,  or  divi 
nations  if  you  choose  to  call  them  so,  I  am  in 
clined  to  say,  as  Turner  did  to  the  lady  who, 
after  looking  at  one  of  his  pictures,  declared 
that  she  could  not  see  all  this  in  nature, 
"Madam,  don't  you  wish  to  heaven  you 
could  ?  "  I  believe  that  in  all  really  great 
imaginative  work  we  are  aware,  as  in  na 
ture,  of  something  far  more  deeply  inter 
fused  with  our  consciousness,  underlying  the 
obvious  and  familiar,  as  the  living  spirit  of 
them,  and  accessible  only  to  a  heightened 
sense  and  a  more  passionate  sympathy.  He 
reads  most  wisely  who  thinks  everything 
into  a  book  that  it  is  capable  of  holding,  and 
it  is  the  stamp  and  token  of  a  great  book  so 
to  incorporate  itself  with  our  own  being,  so 
to  quicken  our  insight  and  stimulate  our 
thought,  as  to  make  us  feel  as  if  we  helped 
to  create  it  while  we  read.  Whatever  we 


170  DON   QUIXOTE. 

can  find  in  a  book  that  aids  us  in  the  con 
duct  of  life,  or  to  a  truer  interpretation  of 
it,  or  to  a  franker  reconcilement  with  it,  we 
may  with  a  good  conscience  believe  is  not 
there  by  accident,  but  that  the  author  meant 
that  we  should  find  it  there.  Cervantes  cer 
tainly  intended  something  of  far  wider  scope 
than  a  mere  parody  on  the  Romances  of 
Chivalry,  which  before  his  day  had  ceased  to 
have  any  vitality  as  motives  of  human  con 
duct,  or  even  as  pictures  of  a  life  that  any 
body  believed  to  have  ever  existed  except  in 
dreamland.  That  he  did  intend  his  book 
as  a  good-humored  criticism  on  doctrinaire 
reformers  who  insist,  in  spite  of  all  history 
and  experience,  on  believing  that  society  is  a 
device  of  human  wit  or  an  imposture  of  hu 
man  cunning,  and  not  a  growth,  an  evolu 
tion  from  natural  causes,  is  clear  enough  in 
more  than  one  passage  to  the  thoughtful 
reader.  It  is  also  a  satire  on  all  attempts 
to  remake  the  world  by  the  means  and 
methods  of  the  past,  and  on  the  humanity  of 
impulse  which  looks  on  each  fact  that  rouses 
its  pity  or  its  sense  of  wrong  as  if  it  was  or 
could  be  complete  in  itself,  and  were  not  in- 
dissolubly  bound  up  with  myriads  of  other 
facts  both  in  the  past  and  the  present.  When 


DON   QUIXOTE.  171 

we  say  that  we  are  all  of  us  the  result  of  the 
entire  past,  we  perhaps  are  not  paying  the 
past  a  very  high  compliment ;  but  it  is  no 
less  true  that  whatever  happens  is  in  some 
sense,  more  or  less  strict,  the  result  of  all 
that  has  happened  before.  As  with  all  men 
of  heated  imaginations,  a  near  object  of 
compassion  occupies  the  whole  mind  of  Don 
Quixote ;  the  figure  of  the  present  sufferer 
looms  gigantic  and  shuts  out  all  perception 
of  remoter  and  more  general  considerations. 
Don  Quixote's  quarrel  is  with  the  struc 
ture  of  society,  and  it  is  only  by  degrees, 
through  much  mistake  and  consequent  suf 
fering,  that  he  finds  out  how  strong  that 
structure  is  ;  nay,  how  strong  it  must  be  in 
order  that  the  world  may  go  smoothly  and 
the  course  of  events  not  be  broken  by  a 
series  of  cataclysms.  The  French  Revolu 
tionists  with  the  sincerest  good  intentions 
set  about  reforming  in  Don  Quixote's  style, 
and  France  has  been  in  commotion  ever 
since.  They  carefully  grubbed  up  every  root 
that  drew  its  sustenance  from  the  past,  and 
have  been  finding  out  ever  since  to  their 
sorrow  that  nothing  with  roots  can  be  made 
to  order.  "  Do  right  though  the  heavens 
fall  "  is  an  admirable  precept  so  long  as  the 


172  DON   QUIXOTE. 

heavens  do  not  take  you  at  your  word  and 
come  down  about  your  ears  —  still  worse 
about  those  of  your  neighbors.  It  is  a  rule 
rather  of  private  than  public  obligation  — 
for  indeed  it  is  the  doing  of  right  that  keeps 
the  heavens  from  falling.  After  Don  Quix 
ote's  temporary  rescue  of  the  boy  Andres 
from  his  master's  beating,  the  manner  in 
which  he  rides  off  and  discharges  his  mind 
of  consequences  is  especially  characteristic 
of  reform  by  theory  without  study  of  cir 
cumstances.  It  is  a  profound  stroke  of 
humor  that  the  reformer  Don  Quixote  should 
caution  Sancho  not  to  attempt  making  the 
world  over  again,  and  to  adapt  himself  to 
circumstances. 

In  one  of  his  adventures,  it  is  in  perfect 
keeping  that  he  should  call  on  all  the  world 
to  stop  "till  he  was  satisfied."  It  is  to  be 
noted  that  in  both  Don  Quixote's  attempts 
at  the  redress  of  particular  wrong  (Andre's 
and  the  galley-slaves)  the  objects  (I  might 
call  them  victims)  of  his  benevolence  come 
back  again  to  his  discomfiture.  In  the  case 
of  Andre's,  Don  Quixote  can  only  blush,  but 
Sancho  (the  practical  man  without  theories) 
gives  the  poor  fellow  a  hunch  of  bread  and 
a  few  pennies,  which  are  very  much  to  the 


DON  QUIXOTE.  173 

purpose.  Cervantes  gives  us  a  plain  hint 
here  that  all  our  mistakes  sooner  or  later 
surely  come  home  to  roost.  It  is  remark 
able  how  independent  of  time  and  circum 
stance  the  satire  of  the  great  humorists 
always  is.  Aristophanes,  Eabelais,  Shake 
speare,  Moliere,  seem  to  furnish  side-lights 
to  what  we  read  in  our  morning  paper.  As 
another  instance  of  this  in  Cervantes,  who 
is  continually  illustrating  it,  read  the  whole 
scene  of  the  liberation  of  the  galley-slaves. 
How  perfectly  does  it  fit  those  humanitarians 
who  cannot  see  the  crime  because  the  person 
of  the  criminal  comes  between  them  and  it ! 
That  Cervantes  knew  perfectly  well  what  he 
was  about  in  his  satire  and  saw  beneath  the 
surface  of  things  is  shown  by  the  appari 
tion  of  the  police  and  of  the  landlord  with 
the  bill  in  his  hand,  for  it  was  these  that 
brought  the  Good  Old  Times  to  their  forlorn 
Hie  Jacet. 

Coleridge,  who  in  reach  and  range  of  in 
telligence,  in  penetration  of  insight,  and  in 
comprehensiveness  of  sympathy  ranks  among 
the  first  of  critics,  says,  "Don  Quixote  is 
not  a  man  out  of  his  senses,  but  a  man  in 
whom  the  imagination  and  the  pure  reason 
are  so  powerful  as  to  make  him  disregard 


174  DON  QUIXOTE. 

the  evidence  of  sense  when  it  opposed  their 
conclusions.  Sancho  is  the  common  sense 
of  the  social  man-animal  unenlightened  and 
unsanctified  by  the  reason.  You  see  how  he 
reverences  his  master  at  the  very  time  he  is 
cheating  him."  W.  S.  Landor  thought  that 
Coleridge  took  the  hint  for  this  enlargement 
of  the  scope  of  the  book  from  him,  but  if 
I  remember  rightly  it  was  Bouterwek  who 
first  pointed  criticism  in  the  right  direction. 
Down  to  his  time  u  Don  Quixote  "  had  been 
regarded  as  a  burlesque,  a  farcical  satire  on 
the  Romances  of  Chivalry,  just  as  Shy  lock 
was  so  long  considered  a  character  of  low 
comedy. 

But  "  Don  Quixote,"  whatever  its  deeper 
meanings  may  be,  has  a  literary  importance 
almost  without  parallel,  arid  it  is  time  that 
we  should  consider  it  briefly.  It  would  be 
hard  to  find  a  book  more  purely  original 
and  without  precedent.  Cervantes  himself 
says  in  the  preface  to  the  First  Part  that 
he  knows  not  what  book  he  is  following 
in  it.  Indeed,  he  follows  none,  though  we 
find  traces  of  his  having  read  the  "  Golden 
Ass "  and  Greek  Romances.  It  was  the 
first  time  that  characters  had  been  drawn 
from  real  life  with  such  nicety  and  dis- 


DON    QUIXOTE.  175 

crimination  of  touch,  with  such  minuteness 
in  particulars,  and  yet  with  such  careful 
elimination  of  whatever  was  unessential  that 
the  personages  are  idealized  to  a  proper  ar 
tistic  distance  from  mere  actuality.  With 
all  this,  how  perfectly  life-like  they  are ! 
As  Don  Quixote  tells  us  that  he  was  almost 
ready  to  say  he  had  seen  Amadis,  and  pro 
ceeds  to  describe  his  personal  appearance 
minutely,  so  we  could  affirm  of  the  Knight  of 
la  Mancha  and  his  Squire.  They  are  real 
not  because  they  are  portraits,  not  because 
they  are  drawn  from  actual  personages,  but 
rather  because  of  their  very  abstraction  and 
generalization.  They  are  not  so  much  taken 
from  life  as  informed  with  it.  They  are 
conceptions,  not  copies  from  any  model ;  cre 
ations  as  no  other  characters  but  those  of 
Shakespeare  are  in  so  full  and  adequate  a 
manner ;  developed  out  of  a  seminal  idea 
like  the  creatures  of  nature,  not  the  matter- 
of-fact  work  of  a  detective's  watchfulness, 
products  of  a  quick  eye  and  a  faithful  mem 
ory,  but  the  true  children  of  the  imaginative 
faculty  from  which  all  the  dregs  of  observa 
tion  and  memory  have  been  distilled  away, 
leaving  only  what  is  elementary  and  univer 
sal.  I  confess  that  in  the  productions  of 


176  DON    QUIXOTE. 

what  is  called  the  realistic  school  I  generally 
find  myself  in  company  that  is  little  to  my 
taste,  dragged  back  into  a  world  from  which 
I  am  only  too  willing  to  escape,  and  set  to 
grind  in  the  prison  house  of  the  Philistines. 
I  walk  about  in  a  nightmare,  the  supreme 
horror  of  whicli  is  that  my  coat  is  all  but 
tonholes  for  bores  to  thrust  their  fingers 
through  and  bait  me  to  their  heart's  con 
tent.  Give  me  the  writers  who  take  me  for 
a  while  out  of  myself  and  (with  pardon  be  it 
spoken)  away  from  my  neighbors  !  I  do  not 
ask  that  characters  should  be  real ;  I  need 
but  go  into  the  street  to  find  such  in  abun 
dance.  I  ask  only  that  they  should  be  pos 
sible,  that  they  should  be  typical,  because 
these  I  find  in  myself  and  with  these  can 
sympathize.  Hector  and  Achilles,  Clytem- 
nestra  and  Antigone,  Roland  and  Oliver, 
Macbeth  and  Lear,  move  about,  if  not  in 
worlds  not  realized,  at  least  in  worlds  not 
realized  to  any  eye  but  that  of  imagination, 
a  world  far  from  the  police  reports,  a  world 
into  which  it  is  a  privilege,  I  might  almost 
call  it  an  achievement,  to  enter.  Don  Quix 
ote  and  his  Squire  are  inhabitants  of  this 
world,  in  spite  of  the  prosaic  and  often  vul 
gar  stage  on  which  their  tragi-comedy  is 


DON   QUIXOTE.  177 

acted,  because  they  are  symbolical,  because 
they  represent  the  two  great  factors  of  hu 
man  character  and  springs  of  human  action 
—  the  Imagination  and  the  Understanding. 
If  you  would  convince  yourself  how  true 
this  is,  compare  them  with  Sir  Hudibras  and 
Ralpho —  or  still  better  with  Roderick  Ran 
dom  and  Strap.  There  can  be  no  better 
proof  that  Cervantes  meant  to  contrast  the 
ideal  with  the  matter  of  fact  in  the  two 
characters  than  his  setting  side  by  side  im 
ages  of  the  same  woman  as  reflected  in  the 
eyes  of  Sancho  and  his  master ;  in  other 
words,  of  common  sense  and  passion.1 

I  shall  not  trouble  you  with  any  labored 
analysis  of  humor.  If  you  wish  to  know 
what  humor  is  I  should  say  read  "  Don 
Quixote."  It  is  the  element  in  which  the 
whole  story  lives  and  moves  and  has  its 
being,  and  it  wakens  and  flashes  round  the 
course  of  the  narrative  like  a  phosphorescent 
sea  in  the  track  of  a  ship.  It  is  nowhere 
absent ;  it  is  nowhere  obtrusive  ;  it  lightens 
and  plays  about  the  surface  for  a  moment 
and  is  gone.  It  is  everywhere  by  sugges 
tion,  it  is  nowhere  with  emphasis  and  insist 
ence.  There  is  infinite  variety,  yet  always 

1  Part.  Prim.  cap.  x.  xxxi. 


178  DON    QUIXOTE. 

in  harmony  with  the  characters  and  the 
purpose  of  the  fable.  The  impression  it 
produces  is  cumulative,  not  sudden  or  start 
ling.  It  is  unobtrusive  as  the  tone  of  good 
conversation.  I  am  not  speaking  of  the  fun 
of  the  book,  of  which  there  is  plenty,  and 
sometimes  boisterous  enough,  but  of  that 
deeper  and  more  delicate  quality,  suggestive 
of  remote  analogies  and  essential  incongru 
ities,  which  alone  deserves  the  name  of 
humor. 

This  quality  is  so  diffused  in  "  Don  Quix 
ote,"  so  thoroughly  permeates  every  pore 
and  fibre  of  the  book,  that  it  is  difficult  to 
exemplify  it  by  citation.  Take  as  examples 
the  scene  with  the  goatherds,  where  Don 
Quixote,  after  having  amply  supped,  dis 
courses  so  eloquently  of  that  Golden  Age 
which  was  happy  in  having  nothing  to  eat 
but  acorns  or  to  drink  but  water ;  where, 
while  insisting  that  Sancho  should  assume 
equality  as  a  man  he  denies  it  to  him  as  San 
cho,  by  reminding  him  that  it  is  granted  by 
one  who  is  his  natural  lord  and  master,  — 
there  is  such  a  difference,  alas,  between  uni 
versal  and  particular  Brotherhood!  Take 
the  debate  of  Don  Quixote  (already  mad) 
as  to  what  form  of  madness  he  should  as- 


DON   QUIXOTE.  179 

sume  ;  the  quarrel  of  the  two  madmen,  Don 
Quixote  and  Cardenio,  about  the  good  fame 
of  Queen  Mad&sima,  a  purely  imaginary 
being  ;  the  resolution  of  Don  Quixote,  when 
forced  to  renounce  knight-errantry,  that  he 
will  become  a  shepherd  of  the  kind  known 
to  poets,  thus  exchanging  one  unreality  for 
another.  Nay,  take  the  whole  book,  if  you 
would  learn  what  humor  is,  whether  in  its 
most  obvious  or  its  most  subtle  manifesta 
tions.  The  highest  and  most  complete  illus 
tration  is  the  principal  character  of  the  story. 
I  do  not  believe  that  a  character  so  abso 
lutely  perfect  in  conception  and  delineation, 
so  psychologically  true,  so  full  of  whimsical 
inconsistencies,  all  combining  to  produce  an 
impression  of  perfect  coherence,  is  to  be 
found  in  fiction.  He  was  a  monomaniac,1 
all  of  whose  faculties,  his  very  senses  them 
selves,  are  subjected  by  one  overmastering 
prepossession,  and  at  last  conspire  with  it, 
almost  against  their  will,  in  spite  of  daily 
disillusion  and  of  the  uniform  testimony  of 
facts  and  events  to  the  contrary.  The  key 
to  Don  Quixote's  character  is  given  in  the 
first  chapter  where  he  is  piecing  out  his  im- 

1  That  Cervantes  had  made  a  study  of  madness  is  evi 
dent  from  the  Introduction  to  the  Second  Part. 


180  DON    QUIXOTE, 

perfect  helmet  with  a  new  visor.  He  makes 
one  of  pasteboard,  and  then,  testing  it  with 
his  sword,  shatters  it  to  pieces.  He  pro 
ceeds  to  make  another  strengthened  with 
strips  of  iron,  and  "  without  caring  to  make 
a  further  trial  of  it,  commissioned  and  held 
it  for  the  finest  possible  visor."  Don  Quix 
ote  always  sees  what  he  wishes  to  see ;  in 
deed,  always  sees  things  as  they  are  unless 
the  necessities  of  his  hallucination  compel 
him  to  see  them  otherwise,  and  it  is  won 
derful  with  what  ingenuity  he  makes  every 
thing  bend  to  those  necessities.  Cervantes 
calls  him  the  sanest  madman  and  the  mad 
dest  reasonable  man  in  the  world.  Sancho 
says  that  he  was  fitter  to  be  preacher  than 
knight-errant.  He  makes  facts  courtesy  to 
his  prepossessions.  At  the  same  time,  with 
exact  truth  to  nature,  he  is  never  perfectly 
convinced  himself  except  in  moments  of  ex 
altation,  and  when  the  bee  in  his  bonnet 
buzzes  so  loudly  as  to  prevent  his  hearing 
the  voice  of  reason.  Cervantes  takes  care 
to  tell  us  that  he  was  never  convinced  that 
he  was  really  a  knight-errant  till  his  cere 
monious  reception  at  the  castle  of  the  Duke. 
Sancho,  on  the  other  hand,  sees  every 
thing  in  the  dry  light  of  common  sense,  ex- 


DON  QUIXOTE.  181 

cept  when  beguiled  by  cupidity  or  under  the 
immediate  spell  of  his  master's  imagination. 
Grant  the  imagination  its  premises,  and  its 
logic  is  irresistible.  Don  Quixote  always 
takes  these  premises  for  granted,  and  Sancho, 
despite  his  natural  shrewdness,  is  more  than 
half  tempted  to  admit  them,  or  at  any  rate 
to  run  the  risk  of  their  being  sound,  on  the 
chance  of  the  reward  which  his  master  per 
petually  dangled  before  him.  This  reward 
was  that  island  of  which  Don  Quixote  con 
fesses  he  cannot  tell  the  name  because  it 
is  not  down  on  any  map.  With  delightful 
humor,  it  begins  as  some  island,  then  be 
comes  the  island,  and  then  one  of  those  isl 
ands.  And  how  much  more  probable  does 
this  vagueness  render  the  fulfilment  of  the 
promise  than  if  Don  Quixote  had  locked 
himself  up  in  a  specific  one  1  A  line  of  re 
treat  is  thus  always  kept  open,  while  Sancho's 
eagerness  is  held  at  bay  by  this  seemingly 
chance  suggestion  of  a  choice  in  these  hy 
pothetical  lordships.  This  vague  potentiality 
of  islands  eludes  the  thrust  of  any  definite 
objection.  And  when  Sancho  is  inclined  to 
grumble  his  master  consoles  him  by  saying, 
"  I  have  already  told  thee,  Sancho,  to  give 
thyself  no  care  about  it ;  for  even  should  the 


182  DON   QUIXOTE. 

island  fail  us,  there  are  the  kingdoms  of  Di- 
namarca  and  Sobradisa  that  would  fit  you  as 
the  ring  fits  the  finger,  and  since  they  are 
on  terra  firma,  you  should  rejoice  the  more." 
All  his  terra  firma  was  in  dreamland.  It 
should  seem  that  Sancho  was  too  shrewd 
for  such  a  bait,  and  that  here  at  least  was 
an  exception  to  that  probability  for  which 
I  have  praised  the  story.  But  I  think  it 
rather  a  justification  of  it.  We  must  re 
member  how  near  the  epoch  of  the  story 
was  to  that  of  the  Conquistador  es,  when 
men's  fancies  were  still  glowing  with  the 
splendid  potentialities  of  adventure.  And 
when  Don  Quixote  suggests  the  possibility  of 
creating  Sancho  a  marquis,  it  is  remarkable 
that  he  mentions  the  title  conferred  upon 
Cortes.  The  conscience  of  Don  Quixote  is 
in  loyalty  to  his  ideal ;  he  prizes  desert  as  an 
inalienable  possession  of  the  soul.  The  con 
science  of  Sancho  is  in  the  eyes  of  his  neigh 
bors,  and  he  values  repute  for  its  worldly 
advantages.  When  Sancho  tries  to  divert 
his  master  from  the  adventure  of  the  Fulling 
Mills  by  arguing  that  it  was  night,  and  that 
none  could  see  them,  so  that  they  might  well 
turn  out  of  the  way  to  avoid  the  danger, 
and  begs  him  rather  to  take  a  little  sleep, 


DON  QUIXOTE.  183 

Don  Quixote  answers  indignantly :  "  Sleep 
thou,  who  wast  born  for  sleep.  As  for  me,  I 
shall  do  whatever  I  see  to  be  most  becoming 
to  my  profession."  With  equal  truth  to 
nature  in  both  cases,  Sancho  is  represented 
as  inclined  to  believe  the  extravagant  delu 
sions  of  his  master  because  he  has  seen  and 
known  him  all  his  life,  while  he  obstinately 
refuses  to  believe  that  a  barber's  basin  is 
the  helmet  of  Mambrino  because  he  sees 
and  knows  that  it  is  a  basin.  Don  Quixote 
says  of  him  to  the  Duke,  "  He  doubts  every 
thing  and  believes  everything."  Cervantes 
was  too  great  an  artist  to  make  him  wholly 
vulgar  and  greedy  and  selfish,  though  he 
makes  him  all  these.  He  is  witty,  wise  ac 
cording  to  his  lights,  affectionate,  and  faith 
ful.  When  he  takes  leave  of  his  imaginary 
governorship  he  is  not  without  a  certain 
manly  dignity  that  is  almost  pathetic. 

The  ingenuity  of  the  story,  the  probabil 
ity  of  its  adventures,  the  unwearied  fecun 
dity  of  invention  shown  in  devising  and 
interlacing  them,  in  giving  variety  to  a  sin 
gle  theme  and  to  a  plot  so  perfectly  simple 
in  its  conception,  are  all  wonderful.  The 
narrative  flows  on  as  if  unconsciously,  and 
our  fancies  float  along  with  it.  It  is  no- 


184  DON  QUIXOTE. 

ticeable,  too,  in  passing,  what  a  hypsethral 
story  it  is,  how  much  of  it  passes  in  the 
open  air,  how  the  sun  shines,  the  birds  sing, 
the  brooks  dance,  and  the  leaves  murmur 
in  it.  This  is  peculiarly  touching  when  we 
recollect  that  it  was  written  in  prison.  In 
the  First  Part  Cervantes  made  the  mistake 
(as  he  himself  afterwards  practically  ad 
mits)  of  introducing  unprofitable  digressions, 
and  in  respect  to  the  propriety  and  congru- 
ousness  of  the  adventures  which  befall  Don 
Quixote  I  must  also  make  one  exception.  I 
mean  the  practical  jokes  played  upon  him 
at  the  Duke's  castle,  in  which  his  delusion 
is  forced  upon  him  instead  of  adapting 
circumstances  to  itself  or  itself  to  circum 
stances,  according  to  the  necessity  of  the 
occasion.  These  tend  to  degrade  him  in 
the  eyes  of  the  reader,  who  resents  rather 
than  enjoys  them,  and  feels  the  essential 
vulgarity  of  his  tormentors  through  all  their 
fine  clothes.  It  is  quite  otherwise  with  the 
cheats  put  upon  Sancho,  for  we  feel  that 
either  he  will  be  shrewd  enough  to  be  more 
than  even  with  the  framers  of  them,  or  that 
he  is  of  too  coarse  a  fibre  to  feel  them 
keenly.  But  Don  Quixote  is  a  gentleman 
and  a  monomaniac,  —  qualities,  the  one  of 


DON   QUIXOTE.  185 

which  renders  such  rudeness  incongruous, 
and  the  other  unfeeling.  He  is,  moreover,  a 
guest.  It  is  curious  that  Shakespeare  makes 
the  same  mistake  with  Falstaff  in  the 
"  Merry  Wives  of  Windsor,"  and  Fielding 
with  Parson  Adams,  and  in  both  cases  to 
our  discomfort.  The  late  Mr.  Edward  Fitz 
gerald  (yuis  desiderio  sit  pudor  aut  modus 
tarn  cari  capitisf)  preferred  the  Second 
Part  to  the  First,  and,  but  for  these  scenes, 
which  always  pain  and  anger  me,  I  should 
agree  with  him.  For  it  is  plain  that  Cer 
vantes  became  slowly  conscious  as  he  went 
on  how  rich  was  the  vein  he  had  hit  upon, 
how  full  of  various  and  profound  suggestion 
the  two  characters  he  had  conceived  and 
who  together  make  a  complete  man.  No 
doubt  he  at  first  proposed  to  himself  a  par 
ody  of  the  Romances  of  Chivalry,  but  his 
genius  soon  broke  away  from  the  leading- 
strings  of  a  plot  that  denied  free  scope  to  his 
deeper  conception  of  life  and  men. 

Cervantes  is  the  father  of  the  modern 
novel,  in  so  far  as  it  has  become  a  study  and 
delineation  of  character  instead  of  being  a 
narrative  seeking  to  interest  by  situation 
and  incident.  He  has  also  more  or  less  di 
rectly  given  impulse  and  direction  to  all  hu- 


186  DON   QUIXOTE. 

moristic  literature  since  his  time.  We  see 
traces  of  him  in  Moliere,  in  Swift,  and  still 
more  clearly  in  Sterne  and  Kichter.  Field 
ing  assimilated  and  Smollett  copied  him. 
Scott  was  his  disciple  in  the  "  Antiquary," 
that  most  delightful  of  his  delightful  novels. 
Irving  imitated  him  in  his  "  Knickerbocker," 
and  Dickens  in  his  "Pickwick  Papers."  I 
do  not  mention  this  as  detracting  from  their 
originality,  but  only  as  showing  the  wonder 
ful  virility  of  his.  The  pedigrees  of  books 
are  as  interesting  and  instructive  as  those  of 
men.  It  is  also  good  for  us  to  remember 
that  this  man  whose  life  was  outwardly  a 
failure  restored  to  Spain  the  universal  em 
pire  she  had  lost* 


HAEVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 


ADDRESS  DELIVERED  IN  SANDERS  THEATRE,  CAMBRIDGE, 
NOVEMBER  8,   1886,   ON  THE  TWO  HUNDRED  AND 
FIFTIETH  ANNIVERSARY  OF   THE  FOUNDA 
TION  OF  HARVARD  UNIVERSITY. 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 


IT  seems  an  odd  anomaly  that,  while  re 
spect  for  age  and  deference  to  its  opinions 
have  diminished  and  are  still  sensibly  di 
minishing  among  us,  the  relish  of  antiquity 
should  be  more  pungent  and  the  value  set 
upon  things  merely  because  they  are  old 
should  be  greater  in  America  than  any 
where  else.  It  is  merely  a  sentimental  rel 
ish,  for  ours  is  a  new  country  in  more  senses 
than  one,  and,  like  children  when  they  are 
.fancying  themselves  this  or  that,  we  have  to 
play  very  hard  in  order  to  believe  that  we 
are  old.  But  we  like  the  game  none  the 
worse,  and  multiply  our  anniversaries  with 
honest  zeal,  as  if  we  increased  our  centuries 
by  the  number  of  events  we  could  congratu 
late  on  having  happened  a  hundred  years 
ago.  There  is  something  of  instinct  in  this, 
and  it  is  a  wholesome  instinct  if  it  serve  to 
quicken  our  consciousness  of  the  forces  that 
are  gathered  by  duration  and  continuity  ;  if 


190  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

it  teach  us  that,  ride  fast  and  far  as  we  may, 
we  carry  the  Past  on  our  crupper,  as  im 
movably  seated  there  as  the  black  Care  of 
the  Roman  poet.  The  generations  of  men 
are  braided  inextricably  together,  and  the 
very  trick  of  our  gait  may  be  countless  gen 
erations  older  than  we. 

I  have  sometimes  wondered  whether,  as 
the  faith  of  men  in  a  future  existence  grew 
less  confident,  they  might  not  be  seeking 
some  equivalent  in  the  feeling  of  a  retro 
spective  duration,  if  not  their  own,  at  least 
that  of  their  race.  Yet  even  this  continuance 
is  trifling  and  ephemeral.  If  the  tablets 
unearthed  and  deciphered  by  Geology  have 
forced  us  to  push  back  incalculably  the  birth 
day  of  man,  they  have  in  like  proportion  im 
poverished  his  recorded  annals,  making  even 
the  Platonic  year  but  as  a  single  grain  of  the 
sand  in  Time's  hour-glass,  and  the  inscrip 
tions  of  Egypt  and  Assyria  modern  as  yes 
terday's  newspaper.  Fancy  flutters  over 
these  vague  wastes  like  a  butterfly  blown  out 
to  sea,  and  finds  no  foothold.  It  is  true  that, 
if  we  may  put  as  much  faith  in  heredity  as 
seems  reasonable  to  many  of  us,  we  are  all 
in  some  transcendental  sense  the  coevals  of 
primitive  man,  and  Pythagoras  may  well 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  191 

have  been  present  in  Euphorbus  at  the  siege 
of  Troy.  Had  Shakespeare's  thought  taken 
this  turn  when  he  said  to  Time  ?  — 

Thy  pyramids  built  up  with  newer  might 
To  me  are  nothing  novel,  nothing  strange ; 
They  are  but  dressings  of  a  former  sight. 

But  this  imputed  and  vicarious  longevity, 
though  it  may  be  obscurely  operative  in  our 
lives  and  fortunes,  is  no  valid  offset  for  the 
shortness  of  our  days,  nor  widens  by  a  hair's 
breadth  the  horizon  of  our  memories.  Man 
and  his  monuments  are  of  yesterday,  and  we, 
however  we  may  play  with  our  fancies,  must 
content  ourselves  with  being  young.  If 
youth  be  a  defect,  it  is  one  that  we  outgrow 
only  too  soon. 

Mr.  Ruskin  said  the  other  day  that  he 
could  not  live  in  a  country  that  had  neither 
castles  nor  cathedrals,  and  doubtless  men  of 
imaginative  temper  find  not  only  charm  but 
inspiration  in  structures  which  Nature  has 
adopted  as  her  foster-children,  and  on  which 
Time  has  laid  his  hand  only  in  benediction. 
It  is  not  their  antiquity,  but  its  association 
with  man,  that  endows  them  with  such  sen 
sitizing  potency.  Even  the  landscape  some 
times  bewitches  us  by  this  glamour  of  a 
human  past,  and  the  green  pastures  and 


192  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

golden  slopes  of  England  are  sweeter  both 
to  the  outward  and  to  the  inward  eye  that 
the  hand  of  man  has  immemorially  cared 
for  and  caressed  them.  The  nightingale 
sings  with  more  prevailing  passion  in  Greece 
that  we  first  heard  her  from  the  thickets  of 
a  Euripidean  chorus.  For  myself,  I  never 
felt  the  working  of  this  spell  so  acutely 
as  in  those  gray  seclusions  of  the  college 
quadrangles  and  cloisters  at  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  conscious  with  venerable  asso 
ciations,  and  whose  very  stones  seemed  hap 
pier  for  being  there.  The  chapel  pavement 
still  whispered  with  the  blessed  feet  of  that 
long  procession  of  saints  and  sages  and 
scholars  and  poets,  who  are  all  gone  into 
a  world  of  light,  but  whose  memories  seem 
to  consecrate  the  soul  from  all  ignobler 
companionship. 

Are  we  to  suppose  that  these  memories 
were  less  dear  and  gracious  to  the  Puritan 
scholars,  at  whose  instigation  this  college 
was  founded,  than  to  that  other  Puritan  who 
sang  the  dim  religious  light,  the  long-drawn 
aisles  and  fretted  vaults,  which  these  mem 
ories  recalled?  Doubtless  all  these  things 
were  present  to  their  minds,  but  they  were 
ready  to  forego  them  all  for  the  sake  of  that 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  193 

truth  whereof,  as  Milton  says  of  himself, 
they  were  members  incorporate.  The  piti 
ful  contrast  which  they  must  have  felt 
between  the  carven  sanctuaries  of  learning 
they  had  left  behind  and  the  wattled  fold 
they  were  rearing  here  on  the  edge  of  the 
wilderness  is  to  me  more  than  tenderly  —  it 
is  almost  sublimely  —  pathetic.  When  I 
think  of  their  unpliable  strength  of  purpose, 
their  fidelity  to  their  ideal,  their  faith  in 
God  and  in  themselves,  I  am  inclined  to  say 
with  Donne  that 

We  are  scarce  our  fathers'  shadows  cast  at  noon. 

Our  past  is  well-nigh  desolate  of  aesthetic 
stimulus.  We  have  none  or  next  to  none  of 
these  aids  to  the  imagination,  of  these  coigns 
of  vantage  for  the  tendrils  of  memory  or 
affection.  Not  one  of  our  older  buildings 
is  venerable,  or  will  ever  become  so.  Time 
refuses  to  console  them.  They  all  look  as 
if  they  meant  business,  and  nothing  more. 
And  it  is  precisely  because  this  College 
meant  business,  business  of  the  gravest  im 
port,  and  did  that  business  as  thoroughly  as 
it  might  with  no  means  that  were  not  nig 
gardly  except  an  abundant  purpose  to  do  its 
best,  —  it  is  precisely  for  this  that  we  have 
gathered  here  to-day.  We  come  back  hither 


194  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

from  the  experiences  of  a  richer  life,  as  the 
son  who  has  prospered  returns  to  the  house 
hold  of  his  youth,  to  find  in  its  very  homeli 
ness  a  pulse,  if  not  of  deeper,  certainly  of 
fonder,  emotion  than  any  splendor  could 
stir.  "  Dear  old  Mother,"  we  say,  "  how 
charming  you  are  in  your  plain  cap  and  the 
drab  silk  that  has  been  turned  again  since 
we  saw  you !  You  were  constantly  forced 
to  remind  us  that  you  could  not  afford  to 
give  us  this  and  that  which  some  other  boys 
had,  but  your  discipline  and  diet  were  whole 
some,  and  you  sent  us  forth  into  the  world 
with  the  sound  constitutions  and  healthy 
appetites  that  are  bred  of  simple  fare." 

It  is  good  for  us  to  commemorate  this 
homespun  past  of  ours ;  good,  in  these  days 
of  a  reckless  and  swaggering  prosperity, 
to  remind  ourselves  how  poor  our  fathers 
were,  and  that  we  celebrate  them  because 
for  themselves  and  their  children  they  chose 
wisdom  and  understanding  and  the  things 
that  are  of  God  rather  than  any  other 
riches.  This  is  our  Founders'  Day,  and  we 
are  come  together  to  do  honor  to  them  all : 
first,  to  the  Commonwealth  which  laid  our 
corner-stone ;  next,  to  the  gentle  and  godly 
youth  from  whom  we  took  our  name,  —  him- 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  195 

self  scarce  more  than  a  name,  —  and  with 
them  to  the  countless  throng  of  benefactors, 
rich  and  poor,  who  have  built  us  up  to  what 
we  are.  We  cannot  do  it  better  than  in  the 
familiar  words :  "  Let  us  now  praise  famous 
men  and  our  fathers  that  begat  us.  The 
Lord  hath  wrought  great  glory  by  them 
through  his  great  power  from  the  begin 
ning.  Leaders  of  the  people  by  their  coun 
sels,  and,  by  their  knowledge  of  learning, 
meet  for  the  people ;  wise  and  eloquent  in 
their  instructions.  There  be  of  them  that 
have  left  a  name  behind  them  that  their 
praises  might  be  reported.  And  some  there 
be  which  have  no  memorial,  who  are  per 
ished  as  though  they  had  never  been.  But 
these  were  merciful  men  whose  righteous 
ness  hath  not  been  forgotten.  With  their 
seed  shall  continually  remain  a  good  inherit 
ance.  Their  seed  standeth  fast,  and  their 
children  for  their  sakes." 

This  two  hundred  and  fiftieth  anniversary 
of  our  College  is  not  remarkable  as  com 
memorating  any  memorable  length  of  days. 
There  is  hardly  a  country  in  Europe  but  can 
show  us  universities  that  were  older  than 
ours  now  is  when  ours  was  but  a  grammar- 
school,  with  Eaton  as  master.  Bologna, 


196  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

Paris,  Oxford,  were  already  famous  schools 
when  Dante  visited  them,  as  I  love  to  think 
he  did,  six  hundred  years  ago.  We  are  an 
cient,  it  is  true,  on  our  own  continent,  an 
cient  even  as  compared  with  several  German 
universities  more  renowned  than  we.  But 
it  is  not  primarily  the  longevity  of  our  Alma 
Mater  upon  which  we  are  gathered  here  to 
congratulate  her  and  each  other.  Kant  says 
somewhere  that,  as  the  records  of  human 
transactions  accumulate,  the  memory  of  man 
will  have  room  only  for  those  of  supreme 
cosmopolitical  importance.  Can  we  claim 
for  the  birthday  we  are  keeping  a  significance 
of  so  wide  a  bearing  and  so  long  a  reach  ? 
If  we  may  not  do  that,  we  may  at  least  af 
firm  confidently  that  the  event  it  records  and 
emphasizes  is  second  in  real  import  to  none 
that  has  happened  in  this  western  hemi 
sphere.  The  material  growth  of  the  colonies 
would  have  brought  about  their  political 
separation  from  the  Mother  Country  in  the 
fulness  of  time,  without  that  stain  of  blood 
which  unhappily  keeps  its  own  memory  green 
so  long.  But  the  founding  of  the  first  Eng 
lish  college  here  was  what  saved  New  Eng 
land  from  becoming  a  mere  geographical  ex 
pression.  It  did  more,  for  it  insured,  and  I 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  197 

believe  was  meant  to  insure,  our  intellectual 
independence  of  the  Old  World.  That  in 
dependence  has  been  long  in  coming,  but  it 
will  come  at  last ;  and  are  not  the  names  of 
the  chiefest  of  those  who  have  hastened  its 
coming  written  on  the  roll  of  Harvard  Col 
lege? 

I  think  this  foundation  of  ours  a  quite 
unexampled  thing.  Surely  never  were  the 
bases  of  such  a  structure  as  this  has  become, 
and  was  meant  to  be,  laid  by  a  community 
of  men  so  poor,  in  circumstances  so  unpre 
cedented,  and  under  what  seemed  such  sul 
len  and  averted  stars.  The  colony,  still  in 
significant,  was  in  danger  of  an  Indian  war, 
was  in  the  throes  of  that  Antinomian  con 
troversy  which  threatened  its  very  existence, 
yet  the  leaders  of  opinion  on  both  sides 
were  united  in  the  resolve  that  sound  learn 
ing  and  an  educated  clergy  should  never 
cease  from  among  them  or  their  descendants 
in  the  commonwealth  they  were  building 
up.  In  the  inidst  of  such  fears  and  such  tu 
mults  Harvard  College  was  born,  and  not 
Marina  herself  had  a  more  blusterous  birth 
or  a  more  chiding  nativity.  The  prevision 
of  those  men  must  have  been  as  clear  as 
their  faith  was  steadfast.  Well  they  knew 


198  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

and  had  laid  to  heart  the  wise  man's  pre 
cept,  "  Take  fast  hold  of  instruction ;  let 
her  not  go ;  for  she  is  thy  life." 

There  can  be  little  question  that  the  ac 
tion  of  the  General  Court  received  its  im 
pulse  and  direction  from  the  clergy,  men  of 
eminent  qualities  and  of  well-deserved  au 
thority.  Among  the  Massachusetts  Bay  col 
onists  the  proportion  of  ministers,  trained  at 
Oxford  and  Cambridge,  was  surprisingly 
large,  and,  if  we  may  trust  the  evidence  of 
contemporary  secular  literature,  such  men 
as  Higginson,  Cotton,  Wilson,  Norton,  Shep- 
hard,  Bulkley,  Davenport,  to  mention  no 
more,  were,  in  learning,  intelligence,  and 
general  accomplishment,  far  above  the  aver 
age  parson  of  the  country  and  the  church 
from  which  their  consciences  had  driven 
them  out.  The  presence  and  influence  of 
such  men  were  of  inestimable  consequence 
to  the  fortunes  of  the  colony.  If  they  were 
narrow,  it  was  as  the  Sword  of  Righteous 
ness  is  narrow.  If  they  had  but  one  idea,  it 
was  as  the  leader  of  a  forlorn  hope  has  but 
one,  and  can  have  no  other,  namely,  to  do 
the  duty  that  is  laid  on  him,  and  ask  no 
questions.  Our  Puritan  ancestors  have  been 
misrepresented  and  maligned  by  persons 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  199 

without  imagination  enough  to  make  them 
selves  contemporary  with,  and  therefore  able 
to  understand,  the  men  whose  memories  they 
strive  to  blacken.  That  happy  breed  of 
men  who,  both  in  church  and  state,  led  our 
first  emigration,  were  children  of  the  most 
splendid  intellectual  epoch  that  England 
has  ever  known.  They  were  the  coevals  of 
a  generation  which  passed  on  in  scarcely 
diminished  radiance  the  torch  of  life  kin 
dled  in  great  Eliza's  golden  days.  Out  of 
the  New  Learning,  the  new  ferment  alike 
religious  and  national,  and  the  New  Discov 
eries  with  their  suggestion  of  boundless  pos 
sibility,  the  alembic  of  that  age  had  distilled 
a  potent  elixir  either  inspiring  or  intoxicat 
ing,  as  the  mind  that  imbibed  it  was  strong 
or  weak.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  the  lips 
of  the  founders  of  New  England  alone  were 
unwetted  by  a  drop  of  that  stimulating 
draught  ?  —  that  Milton  was  the  only  Puri 
tan  that  had  read  Shakespeare  and  Ben  Jon- 
son  and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  ?  I  do  not 
believe  it,  whoever  may.  Did  they  flee  from 
persecution  to  bacoittb  chemselves^\Tse«iutors 
in  turn  ?  This  means  only  that  they  would 
not  permit  their  holy  enterprise  to  be  hin 
dered  or  their  property  to  be  damaged  even 


200  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

by  men  with  the  most  pious  intentions  and 
as  sincere,  if  not  always  so  wise,  as  they. 
They  would  not  stand  any  nonsense,  as  the 
phrase  is,  a  mood  of  mind  from  which  their 
descendants  seem  somewhat  to  have  degen 
erated.  They  were  no  more  unreasonable 
than  the  landlady  of  Taylor  the  Platonist  in 
refusing  to  let  him  sacrifice  a  bull  to  Jupiter 
in  her  back-parlor.  The  New  England  Puri 
tans  of  the  second  generation  became  nar 
row  enough,  and  puppets  of  that  formalism 
against  which  their  fathers  had  revolted. 
But  this  was  the  inevitable  result  of  that 
isolation  which  cut  them  off  from  the  great 
currents  of  cosmopolitan  thought  and  ac 
tion.  Communities  as  well  as  men  have  a 
right  to  be  judged  by  their  best.  We  are 
justified  in  taking  the  elder  Winthrop  as  a 
type  of  the  leading  emigrants,  and  the  more 
we  know  him  the  more  we  learn  to  rever 
ence  his  great  qualities,  whether  of  mind  or 
character.  The  posterity  of  those  earnest 
and  single-minded  men  may  have  thrown  the 
creed  of  their  fathers  into  the  waste-basket, 
-.3^^]^^&^by  Ifo  iflvTid  to  .the  duties  they 
believed  it  to  involve  is  the  most  precious 
and  potent  drop  in  their  transmitted  blood. 
It  is  especially  noteworthy  that  they  did  not 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  201 

make  a  strait-waistcoat  of  this  creed  for  their 
new  college.  The  more  I  meditate  upon 
them,  the  more  I  am  inclined  to  pardon 
the  enthusiasm  of  our  old  preacher  when  he 
said  that  God  had  sifted  three  kingdoms  to 
plant  New  England.1 

The  Massachusetts  Bay  Colony  itself  also 
was  then  and  since  without  a  parallel.  It 
was  established  by  a  commercial  company, 
whose  members  combined  in  themselves  the 
two  by  no  means  incongruous  elements  of 
religious  enthusiasm  and  business  sagacity, 
the  earthy  ingredient,  as  in  dynamite,  hold 
ing  in  check  its  explosive  partner,  which  yet 
could  and  did  explode  on  sufficient  concus 
sion.  They  meant  that  their  venture  should 
be  gainful,  but  at  the  same  time  believed 
that  nothing  could  be  long  profitable  for  the 
body  wherein  the  soul  found  not  also  her 
advantage.  They  feared  God,  and  kept 
their  powder  dry  because  they  feared  Him 

1  Writing1  in  the  country,  with  almost  no  books  about 
me,  I  have  been  obliged  to  trust  wholly  to  my  memory 
in  my  references.  My  friend  Dr.  Charles  Deane,  the 
most  learned  of  our  historical  antiquarians,  kindly  in 
forms  me  that  the  passage  alluded  to  in  the  text  should 
read,  "God  sifted  a  whole  Nation  that  he  might  send 
choice  Grain  out  into  this  Wilderness."  Stough ton's 
Election  Sermon,  preached  in  1668. 


202  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

and  meant  that  others  should.  I  think  their 
most  remarkable  characteristic  was  their 
public  spirit,  and  in  nothing  did  they  show 
both  that  and  the  wise  forecast  that  gives  it 
its  best  value  more  clearly  than  when  they 
resolved  to  keep  the  higher  education  of 
youth  in  their  own  hands  and  under  their 
own  eye.  This  they  provided  for  in  the 
college.  Eleven  years  later  they  established 
their  system  of  public  schools,  where  read 
ing  and  writing  should  be  taught.  This 
they  did  partly,  no  doubt,  to  provide  feed 
ers  for  the  more  advanced  schools,  and  so 
for  the  college,  but  even  more,  it  may  safely 
be  inferred,  because  they  had  found  that  the 
polity  to  which  their  ends,  rough-hew  them 
as  they  might,  must  be  shaped  by  the  con 
ditions  under  which  they  were  forced  to  act, 
could  be  safe  only  in  the  hands  of  intelli 
gent  men,  or,  at  worst,  of  men  to  whom  they 
had  given  a  chance  to  become  such. 

In  founding  the  College,  they  had  three 
objects :  first,  the  teaching  of  the  Humanities 
and  of  Hebrew,  as  the  hieratic  language  ; 
second,  the  training  of  a  learned  as  well  as 
godly  clergy  ;  and  third,  the  education  of  the 
Indians,  that  they  might  serve  as  mission 
aries  of  a  higher  civilization  and  of  a  purer 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  203 

religion,  as  the  necessary  preliminary  thereto. 
The  third  of  these  objects,  after  much  effort 
and  much  tribulation,  they  were  forced  to 
abandon.  John  Winthrop,  Jr.,  in  a  letter 
written  to  the  Honorable  Eobert  Boyle  in 
1663,  gives  us  an  interesting  glimpse  of  a  pair 
of  these  dusky  catechumens.  "  I  make  bold," 
he  says,  u  to  send  heere  inclosed  a  kind  of 
rarity ;  ...  It  is  two  papers  of  Latin  com 
posed  by  two  Indians  now  scollars  in  the 
Colledge  in  this  country,  and  the  writing  is 
with  their  own  hands.  .  .  .  Possibly  as  a 
novelty  of  that  kind  it  may  be  acceptable, 
being  a  reall  fruit  of  that  hopefull  worke  y* 
is  begu  amongst  them  .  .  .  testifying  thus 
much  that  I  received  them  of  those  Indians 
out  of  their  own  hands,  and  had  ready  an 
swers  fro  them  in  Latin  to  many  questions 
that  I  propounded  to  them  in  y*  language, 
and  heard  them  both  express  severall  sen 
tences  in  Greke  also.  I  doubt  not  but  those 
honorable  fautores  Scientiarum  [the  Royal 
Society]  will  gladly  receive  the  intelligence 
of  such  Vestiqia  Doctrines  in  this  wilderness 

t/ 

amongst  such  a  barbarous  people."  Alas, 
these  Vestigia  became  only  too  soon  retror- 
sum !  The  Indians  showed  a  far  greater 
natural  predisposition  for  disfurnishing  the 


204  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

outside  of  other  people's  heads  than  for  fur 
nishing  the  insides  of  their  own.  Their  own 
wild  life  must  have  been  dear  to  them  ;  the 
forest  beckoned  just  outside  the  College  door, 
and  the  first  blue-bird  of  spring  whistled 
them  back  to  the  woods.  They  would  have 
said  to  the  president,  with  the  Gypsy  steward 
in  the  old  play  when  he  heard  the  new-come 
nightingale,  "  Oh,  Sir,  you  hear  I  am  called." 
At  any  rate,  our  College  succeeded  in  keep 
ing  but  one  of  these  wild  creatures  long 
enough  to  make  a  graduate  of  him,  and  he 
thereupon  vanishes  into  the  merciful  shadow 
of  the  past.  His  name  —  but,  as  there  was 
only  one  Indian  graduate,  so  there  is  only 
one  living  man  who  can  pronounce  his  uncon 
verted  name,  and  I  leave  the  task  to  Dr. 
Hammond  Trumbull. 

I  shall  not  attempt,  even  in  brief,  a  history 
of  the  College.  It  has  already  been  excel 
lently  done.  A  compendium  of  it  would  be 
mainly  a  list  of  unfamiliar  names,  and  Cole 
ridge  has  said  truly  that  such  names  "are 
non-conductors  ;  they  stop  all  interest." 

The  fame  and  usefulness  of  all  institutions 
of  learning  depend  on  the  greatness  of  those 
who  teach  in  them, 

Queis  arte  benigna, 

Et  meliore  Into  finxit  praecordia  Titan, 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  205 

and  great  teachers  are  almost  rarer  than 
great  poets.  We  can  lay  claim  to  none  such 
(I  must  not  speak  of  the  living),  unless  it  be 
Agassiz,  whom  we  adopted,  but  we  have  had 
many  devoted  and  some  eminent.  It  has  not 
been  their  fault  if  they  have  not  pushed  far 
ther  forward  the  boundaries  of  knowledge. 
Our  professors  have  been  compelled  by  the 
necessities  of  the  case  (as  we  are  apt  to  call 
things  which  we  ought  to  reform,  but  do  not) 
to  do  too  much  work  not  properly  theirs,  and 
that  of  a  kind  so  exacting  as  to  consume  the 
energy  that  might  have  been  ample  for  higher 
service.  They  have  been  obliged  to  double 
the  parts  of  professor  and  tutor.  During  the 
seventeenth  century  we  have  reason  to  think 
that  the  College  kept  pretty  well  up  to  the 
standard  of  its  contemporary  colleges  in 
England,  so  far  as  its  poverty  would  allow. 
It  seems  to  have  enjoyed  a  certain  fame 
abroad  among  men  who  sympathized  with  the 
theology  it  taught,  for  I  possess  a  Hebrew 
Accidence,  dedicated  some  two  hundred  years 
ago  to  the  "  illustrious  academy  at  Boston  in 
New  England,"  by  a  Dutch  scholar  whom  I 
cannot  help  thinking  a  very  discerning  per 
son.  That  the  students  of  that  day  had 
access  to  a  fairly  good  library  may  be  inferred 


206  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

from  Cotton  Mather's  "  Magnalia,"  though 
he  knew  not  how  to  make  the  best  use  of  it, 
and  is  a  very  nightmare  of  pedantry.  That 
the  College  had  made  New  England  a  good 
market  for  books  is  proved  by  John  Dunton's 
journey  hither  in  the  interests  of  his  trade. 
During  the  eighteenth  and  first  quarter  of 
the  nineteenth  centuries,  I  fancy  the  condi 
tion  of  things  here  to  have  been  very  much 
what  it  was  in  the  smaller  English  colleges  of 
the  period,  if  we  may  trust  the  verses  which 
Gray  addressed  to  the  goddess  Ignorance. 
Young  men  who  were  willing  mainly  to  teach 
themselves  might  get  something  to  their  ad 
vantage,  while  the  rest  were  put  here  by 
their  parents  as  into  a  comfortable  quaran 
tine,  where  they  could  wait  till  the  gates  of 
life  were  opened  to  them,  safe  from  any  con 
tagion  of  learning,  except  such  as  might  be 
developed  from  previous  infection.  I  am 
speaking  of  a  great  while  ago.  Men  are  apt, 
I  know,  in  after  life  to  lay  the  blame  of  their 
scholastic  shortcomings  at  the  door  of  their 
teachers.  They  are  often  wrong  in  this,  and 
I  am  quite  aware  that  there  are  some  pupils 
who  are  knowledge-proof  ;  but  I  gather  from 
tradition,  which  I  believe  to  be  trustworthy, 
that  there  have  been  periods  in  the  history 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  207 

of  the  college  when  the  students  might  have 
sung  with  Bishop  Golias : — 

Hi  nos  decent,  sed  indocti ; 
Hi  nos  decent,  et  nox  nocti 
Indicat  scientiam. 

Despite  all  this,  it  is  remarkable  that  the 
two  first  American  imaginative  artists,  All- 
ston  in  painting  and  Greenough  in  sculp 
ture,  were  graduates  of  Harvard.  A  later 
generation  is  justly  proud  of  Story. 

We  have  a  means  of  testing  the  general 
culture  given  here  towards  the  middle  of  the 
last  century  in  the  Gratulatio  presented  by 
Harvard  College  on  the  accession  of  George 
III.  It  is  not  duller  than  such  things  usually 
are  on  the  other  side  of  the  water,  and  it 
shows  a  pretty  knack  at  tagging  verses.  It 
is  noteworthy  that  the  Greek  in  it,  if  I  re 
member  rightly,  is  wholly  or  chiefly  Governor 
Bernard's.  A  few  years  earlier,  some  of  the 
tracts  in  the  Whitfield  controversy  prove  that 
the  writers  had  got  here  a  thorough  training 
in  English  at  least.  They  had  certainly  not 
read  their  Swift  in  vain. 

But  the  chief  service,  as  it  was  the  chief 
office,  of  the  College  during  all  those  years 
was  to  maintain  and  hand  down  the  tradi 
tions  of  how  excellent  a  thing  Learning  was, 


208  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

even  if  the  teaching  were  not  always  adequate 
by  way  of  illustration.  And  yet,  so  far  as 
that  teaching  went,  it  was  wise  in  this,  that 
it  gave  its  pupils  some  tincture  of  letters 
as  distinguished  from  mere  scholarship.  It 
aimed  to  teach  them  the  authors,  that  is,  the 
few  great  ones,  —  the  late  Professor  Popkin, 
whom  the  older  of  us  remember,  would  have 
allowed  that  title  only  to  the  Greeks,  —  and 
to  teach  them  in  such  a  way  as  to  enable  the 
pupil  to  assimilate  somewhat  of  their  thought, 
sentiment,  and  style,  rather  than  to  master  the 
minuter  niceties  of  the  language  in  which 
they  wrote.  It  struck  for  their  matter,  as 
Montaigne  advised,  who  would  have  men 
taught  to  love  Virtue  instead  of  learning  to 
decline  virtus.  It  set  more  store  by  the 
marrow  than  by  the  bone  that  encased  it.  It 
made  language,  as  it  should  be,  a  ladder  to 
literature,  and  not  literature  a  ladder  to 
language.  Many  a  boy  has  hated,  and 
rightly  hated,  Homer  and  Horace  the  peda 
gogues  and  grammarians,  who  would  have 
loved  Homer  and  Horace  the  poets,  had  he 
been  allowed  to  make  their  acquaintance. 
The  old  method  of  instruction  had  the  prime 
merit  of  enabling  its  pupils  to  conceive  that 
there  is  neither  ancient  nor  modern  on  the 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  209 

narrow  shelves  of  what  is  truly  literature. 
We  owe  a  great  debt  to  the  Germans.  No 
one  is  more  indebted  to  them  than  I,  but 
is  there  not  danger  of  their  misleading  us  in 
some  directions  into  pedantry  ?  In  his  pref 
ace  to  an  Old  French  poem  of  the  thirteenth 
century,  lately  published,  the  editor  informs 
us  sorrowfully  that  he  had  the  advantage  of 
listening  only  two  years  and  a  half  to  the 
lectures  of  Professor  Gaston  Paris,  in  which 
time  he  got  no  farther  than  through  the  first 
three  vowels.  At  this  rate,  to  master  the 
whole  alphabet,  consonants  and  all,  would  be 
a  task  fitter  for  the  centurial  adolescence  of 
Methuselah  than  for  our  less  liberal  ration  of 
years.  I  was  glad  my  editor  had  had  this 
advantage,  and  I  am  quite  willing  that  Old 
French  should  get  the  benefit  of  such  scrupu 
losity,  but  I  think  I  see  a  tendency  to  train 
young  men  in  the  languages  as  if  they  were 
all  to  be  editors,  and  not  lovers  of  polite 
literature.  Education,  we  are  often  told,  is 
a  drawing  out  of  the  faculties.  May  they 
not  be  drawn  out  too  thin  ?  I  am  not  under 
valuing  philology  or  accuracy  of  scholarship. 
Both  are  excellent  and  admirable  in  their 
places.  But  philology  is  less  beautiful  to 
me  than  philosophy,  as  Milton  understood  the 


210  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

word,  and  mere  accuracy  is  to  Truth  as  a 
plaster-cast  to  the  marble  statue ;  it  gives 
the  facts,  but  not  their  meaning.  If  I  must 
choose,  I  had  rather  a  young  man  should 
be  intimate  with  the  genius  of  the  Greek 
dramatic  poets  than  with  the  metres  of  their 
choruses,  though  I  should  be  glad  to  have 
him  on  easy  terms  with  both. 

For  more  than  two  hundred  years,  in  its 
discipline  and  courses  of  study,  the  College 
followed  mainly  the  lines  traced  by  its  found 
ers.  The  influence  of  its  first  half  century 
did  more  than  any  other,  perhaps  more  than 
all  others,  to  make  New  England  what  it  is. 
During  the  one  hundred  and  forty  years 
preceding  our  War  of  Independence  it  had 
supplied  the  schools  of  the  greater  part  of 
New  England  with  teachers.  What  was 
even  more  important,  it  had  sent  to  every 
parish  in  Massachusetts  one  man,  the  clergy 
man,  with  a  certain  amount  of  scholarship,  a 
belief  in  culture,  and  generally  pretty  sure 
to  bring  with  him  or  to  gather  a  consider 
able  collection  of  books,  by  no  means  wholly 
theological.  Simple  and  godly  men  were 
they,  the  truest  modern  antitypes  of  Chau 
cer's  Good  Parson,  receiving  much,  some 
times  all,  of  their  scanty  salary  in  kind,  and 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  211 

eking  it  out  by  the  drudgery  of  a  cross- 
grained  farm  where  the  soil  seems  all  back 
bone.  If  there  was  no  regular  practitioner, 
they  practised  without  fee  a  grandmotherly 
sort  of  medicine,  probably  not  much  more 
harmful  (  0,  dura  messorum  ilia)  than  the 
heroic  treatment  of  the  day.  They  con 
trived  to  save  enough  to  send  their  sons 
through  college,  to  portion  their  daughters, 
decently  trained  in  English  literature  of  the 
more  serious  kind,  and  perfect  in  the  duties 
of  household  and  dairy,  and  to  make  modest 
provision  for  the  widow,  if  they  should  leave 
one.  With  all  this,  they  gave  their  two 
sermons  every  Sunday  of  the  year,  and  of  a 
measure  that  would  seem  ruinously  liberal 
to  these  less  stalwart  days,  when  scarce  ten 
parsons  together  could  lift  the  stones  of 
Diomed  which  they  hurled  at  Satan  with 
the  easy  precision  of  lifelong  practice.  And 
if  they  turned  their  barrel  of  discourses  at 
the  end  of  the  Horatian  ninth  year,  which 
of  their  parishioners  was  the  wiser  for  it  ? 
Their  one  great  holiday  was  Commencement, 
which  they  punctually  attended.  They  shared 
the  many  toils  and  the  rare  festivals,  the 
joys  and  the  sorrows,  of  their  townsmen  as 
bone  of  their  bone  and  flesh  of  their  flesh, 


212  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

for  all  were  of  one  blood  and  of  one  faith. 
They  dwelt  on  the  same  brotherly  level  with 
them  as  men,  yet  set  apart  from  and  above 
them  by  their  sacred  office.  Preaching  the 
most  terrible  of  doctrines,  as  most  of  them 
did,  they  were  humane  and  cheerful  men, 
and  when  they  came  down  from  the  pulpit 
seemed  to  have  been  merely  twisting  their 
"  cast-iron  logic "  of  despair,  as  Coleridge 
said  of  Donne,  "  into  true-love-knots."  Men 
of  authority,  wise  in  council,  independent, 
for  their  settlement  was  a  life-tenure,  they 
were  living  lessons  of  piety,  industry,  fru 
gality,  temperance,  and,  with  the  magis 
trates,  were  a  recognized  aristocracy.  Surely 
never  was  an  aristocracy  so  simple,  so  harm 
less,  so  exemplary,  and  so  fit  to  rule.  I  re 
member  a  few  lingering  survivors  of  them 
in  my  early  boyhood,  relics  of  a  serious  but 
not  sullen  past,  of  a  community  for  which  in 
civic  virtue,  intelligence,  and  general  effi 
cacy  I  seek  a  parallel  in  vain  :  — 

rusticorum  mascula  militum 
Proles  .   .  .  docta  .   .  . 

Versare  glebas  et  severse 
Matris  ad  arbitrium  recisos 

Portare  fustes. 

I   know   too   well   the   deductions   to  be 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  213 

made.  It  was  a  community  without  charm, 
or  with  a  homely  charm  at  best,  and  the  life 
it  led  was  visited  by  no  muse  even  in  dream. 
But  it  was  the  stuff  out  of  which  fortunate 
ancestors  are  made,  and  twenty-five  years 
ago  their  sons  showed  in  no  diminished 
measure  the  qualities  of  the  breed.  In  every 
household  some  brave  boy  was  saying  to  his 
mother,  as  Iphigenia  to  hers,  — 

Tlaai  yap  p  "EAA7j<n  KOivbv  ere/c  cs  ovxl  <rol 


Nor  were  Harvard's  sons  the  last.  This  hall 
commemorates  them,  but  their  story  is  writ 
ten  in  headstones  all  over  the  land  they 
saved. 

To  the  teaching  and  example  of  those  rev 
erend  men  whom  Harvard  bred  and  then 
planted  in  every  hamlet  as  pioneers  and  out 
posts  of  her  doctrine,  Massachusetts  owes 
the  better  part  of  her  moral  and  intellectual 
inheritance.  They,  too,  were  the  progeni 
tors  of  a  numerous  and  valid  race.  My 
friend  Dr.  Holmes  was,  I  believe,  the  first 
to  point  out  how  large  a  proportion  of  our 
men  of  light  and  leading  sprang  from  their 
loins.  The  illustrious  Chief  Magistrate  of 
the  Republic,  who  honors  us  with  his  pres 
ence  here  to-day,  has  ancestors  italicized  in 


214  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

our  printed  registers,  and  has  shown  himself 
worthy  of  his  pedigree. 

During  the  present  century,  I  believe  that 
Harvard  received  and  welcomed  the  new 
learning  from  Germany  at  the  hands  of  Ev 
erett,  Bancroft,  and  Ticknor,  before  it  had 
been  accepted  by  the  more  conservative  uni 
versities  of  the  Old  Home.  Everett's  trans 
lation  of  Buttmann's  Greek  Grammar  was 
reprinted  in  England,  with  the  "  Massachu 
setts  "  omitted  after  "  Cambridge,"  at  the 
end  of  the  preface,  to  conceal  its  American 
origin.  Emerson  has  told  us  how  his  intel 
lectual  life  was  quickened  by  the  eloquent 
enthusiasm  of  Everett's  teaching.  Mr.  Ban 
croft  made  strenuous  efforts  to  introduce 
a  more  wholesome  discipline  and  maturer 
methods  of  study,  with  the  result  of  a  rebel 
lion  of  the  Freshman  Class,  who  issued  a 
manifesto  of  their  wrongs,  written  by  the  late 
Robert  Rantoul,  which  ended  thus  :  "  Shall 
FREEMEN  bear  this?  FRESHMEN  are  free 
men  !  "  They,  too,  remembered  Revolution 
ary  sires.  Mr.  Bancroft's  translation  of 
Heeren  was  the  first  of  its  kind,  and  it  is 
worth  mention  that  the  earliest  version  from 
the  prose  of  Henry  Heine  into  English  was 
made  here,  though  not  by  a  graduate  of 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  215 

Harvard.  Ticknor  also  strove  earnestly  to 
enlarge  the  scope  of  the  collegiate  courses  of 
study.  The  force  of  the  new  impulse  did 
not  last  long,  or  produce,  unless  indirectly, 
lasting  results.  It  was  premature,  the  stu 
dents  were  really  school-boys,  and  the  col 
lege  was  not  yet  capable  of  the  larger  uni 
versity  life.  The  conditions  of  American 
life,  too,  were  such  that  young  men  looked 
upon  scholarship  neither  as  an  end  nor  as 
a  means,  but  simply  as  an  accomplishment, 
like  music  or  dancing,  of  which  they  were  to 
acquire  a  little  more  or  a  little  less,  gener 
ally  a  little  less,  according  to  individual  taste 
or  circumstances.  It  has  been  mainly  dur 
ing  the  last  twenty-five  years  that  the  Col 
lege,  having  already  the  name,  but  by  no 
means  all  the  resources,  of  a  university,  has 
been  trying  to  perform  some,  at  least,  of  the 
functions  which  that  title  implies. 

Now  half  appears 

The  tawny  lion,  pawing  to  get  free 

Let  us,  then,  no  longer  look  backwards, 
but  forwards,  as  our  fathers  did  when  they 
laid  our  humble  foundations  in  the  wilder 
ness.  The  motto  first  proposed  for  the  Col 
lege  arms  was,  as  you  know,  Veritas,  writ 
ten  across  three  open  books.  It  was  a  noble 


210  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

one,  and,  if  the  full  bearing  of  it  was  un 
derstood,  as  daring  as  it  was  noble.  Per 
haps  it  was  discarded  because  an  open  book 
seemed  hardly  the  fittest  symbol  for  what  is 
so  hard  to  find,  and,  if  ever  we  fancy  we 
have  found  it,  so  hard  to  decipher  and  to 
translate  into  our  own  language  and  life. 
Pilate's  question  still  murmurs  in  the  ear  of 
every  thoughtful,  and  Montaigne's  in  that  of 
every  honest  man.  The  motto  finally  sub 
stituted  for  that,  Christo  et  Ecclesice,  is, 
when  rightly  interpreted,  substantially  the 
same,  for  it  means  that  we  are  to  devote  our 
selves  to  the  highest  conception  we  have  of 
Truth  and  to  the  preaching  of  it.  Fortu 
nately,  the  Sphinx  proposes  her  conundrums 
to  us  one  at  a  time  and  at  intervals  propor 
tioned  to  our  wits. 

Joseph  de  Maistre  says  that  "  un  homme 
d'esprit  est  tenu  de  savoir  deux  choses :  1°, 
ce  qu'il  est;  2°,  ou  il  est."  The  questions 
for  us  are,  In  what  sense  are  we  become  a 
university?  And  then,  if  we  become  so, 
What  and  to  what  end  should  a  university 
aim  to  teach  now  and  here  in  this  America 
of  ours  whose  meaning  no  man  can  yet  com 
prehend  ?  And,  when  we  have  settled  what 
it  is  best  to  teach,  comes  the  further  ques- 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  217 

tion,  How  are  we  to  teach  it?  Whether 
with  an  eye  to  its  effect  on  developing  char 
acter  or  personal  availability,  that  is  to  say, 
to  its  effect  in  the  conduct  of  life,  or  on  the 
chances  of  getting  a  livelihood  ?  Perhaps 
we  shall  find  that  we  must  have  a  care  for 
both,  and  I  cannot  see  why  the  two  need 
be  incompatible  ;  but  if  they  are,  I  should 
choose  the  former  term  of  the  alternative. 

In  a  not  remote  past,  society  had  still  cer 
tain  recognized,  authoritative  guides,  and 
the  college  trained  them  as  the  fashion  of 
the  day  required.  But 

Damnosa  quid  non  imminuit  dies  ? 

That  ancient  close  corporation  of  official 
guides  has  been  compelled  to  surrender  its 
charter.  We  are  pestered  with  as  many 
volunteers  as  at  Niagara,  and,  as  there,  if  we 
follow  any  of  them,  may  count  on  paying  for 
it  pretty  dearly.  The  office  of  the  higher 
instruction,  nevertheless,  continues  to  be  as 
it  always  was,  the  training  of  such  guides  ; 
only  it  must  now  try  to  fit  them  out  with  as 
much  more  personal  accomplishment  and 
authority  as  may  compensate  the  loss  of 
hierarchical  prestige. 

When  President  Walker,  it  must  be  now 
nearly  thirty  years  ago,  asked  me  in  common 


218  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

with  my  colleagues  what  my  notion  of  a  uni 
versity  was,  I  answered,  "  A  university  is  a 
place  where  nothing  useful  is  taught ;  but  a 
university  is  possible  only  where  a  man  may 
get  his  livelihood  by  digging  Sanscrit  roots." 
What  I  meant  was  that  the  highest  office  of 
the  somewhat  complex  thing  so  named  was 
to  distribute  the  true  Bread  of  Life,  the  pane 
'degli  angeli,  as  Dante  called  it,  and  to  breed 
an  appetite  for  it;  but  that  it  should  also 
have  the  means  and  appliances  for  teaching 
everything,  as  the  medieval  universities 
aimed  to  do  in  their  trivium  and  quadri- 
vium.  I  had  in  mind  the  ideal  and  the 
practical  sides  of  the  institution,  and  was 
thinking  also  whether  such  an  institution 
was  practicable,  and,  if  so,  whether  it  was 
desirable,  in  a  country  like  this.  I  think  it 
eminently  desirable,  and,  if  it  be,  what  should 
be  its  chief  function?  I  choose  rather  to 
hesitate  my  opinion  than  to  assert  it  roundly. 
But  some  opinion  I  am  bound  to  have,  either 
my  own  or  another  man's,  if  I  would  be  in 
the  fashion,  though  I  may  not  be  wholly 
satisfied  with  the  one  or  the  other.  Opin 
ions  are  "  as  handy,"  to  borrow  our  Yankee 
proverb,  "  as  a  pocket  in  a  shirt,"  and,  I  may 
add,  as  hard  to  come  at.  I  hope,  then,  that 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  219 

the  day  will  come  when  a  competent  pro 
fessor  may  lecture  here  also  for  three  years 
on  the  first  three  vowels  of  the  Romance 
alphabet,  and  find  fit  audience,  though  few. 
I  hope  the  day  may  never  come  when  the 
weightier  matters  of  a  language,  namely, 
such  parts  of  its  literature  as  have  overcome 
death  by  reason  of  their  wisdom  and  of  the 
beauty  in  which  it  is  incarnated,  such  parts 
as  are  universal  by  reason  of  their  civilizing 
properties,  their  power  to  elevate  and  fortify 
the  mind,  —  I  hope  the  day  may  never  come 
when  these  are  not  predominant  in  the  teach 
ing  given  here.  Let  the  Humanities  be 
maintained  undiminished  in  their  ancient 
right.  Leave  in  their  traditional  pre-emi 
nence  those  arts  that  were  rightly  called  lib 
eral  ;  those  studies  that  kindle  the  imagina 
tion,  and  through  it  irradiate  the  reason  ; 
those  studies  that  manumitted  the  modern 
mind ;  those  in  which  the  brains  of  finest 
temper  have  found  alike  their  stimulus  and 
their  repose,  taught  by  them  that  the  power 
of  intellect  is  heightened  in  proportion  as  it 
is  made  gracious  by  measure  and  symmetry. 
Give  us  science,  too,  but  give  first  of  all,  and 
last  of  all,  the  science  that  ennobles  life  and 
makes  it  generous.  I  stand  here  as  a  man 


220  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

of  letters,  and  as  a  man  of  letters  I  must 
speak.  But  I  am  speaking  with  no  exclusive 
intention.  No  one  believes  more  firmly  than 
I  in  the  usefulness,  I  might  well  say  the  ne 
cessity,  of  variety  in  study,  and  of  opening 
the  freest  scope  possible  to  the  prevailing 
bent  of  every  mind  when  that  bent  shows 
itself  to  be  so  predominating  as  to  warrant 
it.  Many-sidedness  of  culture  makes  our 
vision  clearer  and  keener  in  particulars. 
For  after  all,  the  noblest  definition  of  Sci 
ence  is  that  breadth  and  impartiality  of  view 
which  liberates  the  mind  from  specialties, 
and  enables  it  to  organize  whatever  we  learn, 
so  that  it  become  real  Knowledge  by  being 
brought  into  true  and  helpful  relation  with 
the  rest. 

By  far  the  most  important  change  that 
has  been  introduced  into  the  theory  and 
practice  of  our  teaching  here  by  the  new 
position  in  which  we  find  ourselves  has  been 
that  of  the  elective  or  voluntary  system  of 
studies.  We  have  justified  ourselves  by  the 
familiar  proverb  that  one  man  may  lead  a 
horse  to  water,  but  ten  can't  make  him  drink. 
Proverbs  are  excellent  things,  but  we  should 
not  let  even  proverbs  bully  us.  They  are 
the  wisdom  of  the  understanding,  not  of  the 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  221 

higher  reason.  There  is  another  animal, 
which  even  Simonides  could  compliment 
only  on  the  spindle-side  of  his  pedigree,  and 
which  ten  men  could  not  lead  to  water,  much 
less  make  him  drink  when  they  got  him 
thither.  Are  we  not  trying  to  force  univer 
sity  forms  into  college  methods  too  narrow 
for  them  ?  There  is  some  danger  that  the 
elective  system  may  be  pushed  too  far  and 
too  fast.  There  are  not  a  few  who  think 
that  it  has  gone  too  far  already.  And  they 
think  so  because  we  are  in  process  of  trans 
formation,  still  in  the  hobbledehoy  period, 
not  having  ceased  to  be  a  college,  nor  yet 
having  reached  the  full  manhood  of  a  uni 
versity,  so  that  we  speak  with  that  ambigu 
ous  voice,  half  bass,  half  treble,  or  mixed  of 
both,  which  is  proper  to  a  certain  stage  of 
adolescence.  We  are  trying  to  do  two  things 
with  one  tool,  and  that  tool  not  specially 
adapted  to  either.  Are  our  students  old 
enough  thoroughly  to  understand  the  import 
of  the  choice  they  are  called  on  to  make, 
and,  if  old  enough,  are  they  wise  enough  ? 
Shall  their  parents  make  the  choice  for 
them  ?  I  am  not  sure  that  even  parents  are 
so  wise  as  the  unbroken  experience  and 
practice  of  mankind.  We  are  comforted  by 


222  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

being  told  that  in  this  we  are  only  comply 
ing  with  what  is  called  the  Spirit  of  the 
Age,  which  may  be,  after  all,  only  a  finer 
name  for  the  mischievous  goblin  known  to 
our  forefathers  as  Puck.  I  have  seen  sev 
eral  Spirits  of  the  Age  in  my  time,  of  very 
different  voices  and  summoning  in  very  dif 
ferent  directions,  but  unanimous  in  their 
propensity  to  land  us  in  the  mire  at  last. 
Would  it  not  be  safer  to  make  sure  first 
whether  the  Spirit  of  the  Age,  who  would 
be  a  very  insignificant  fellow  if  we  docked 
him  of  his  capitals,  be  not  a  lying  spirit, 
since  such  there  are  ?  It  is  at  least  curious 
that,  while  the  more  advanced  teaching  has 
a  strong  drift  in  the  voluntary  direction, 
the  compulsory  system,  as  respects  primary 
studies,  is  gaining  ground.  Is  it  indeed  so 
self-evident  a  proposition  as  it  seems  to 
many  that  "  You  may  "is  as  wholesome  a 
lesson  for  youth  as  "  You  must  "  ?  Is  it  so 
good  a  fore-schooling  for  Life,  which  will 
be  a  teacher  of  quite  other  mood,  making 
us  learn,  rod  in  hand,  precisely  those  lessons 
we  should  not  have  chosen  ?  I  have,  to  be 
sure,  heard  the  late  President  Quincy  (cla- 
rum  et  venerabile  nomen)  say  that  if  a  young 
man  came  hither  and  did  nothing  more  than 


HARVARD   ANNIVERSARY.  223 

nib  his  shoulders  against  the  college  build 
ings  for  four  years,  he  would  imbibe  some 
tincture  of  sound  learning  by  an  involuntary 
process  of  absorption.  The  founders  of  the 
College  also  believed  in  some  impulsions  to 
wards  science  communicated  d  tergo  but  of 
sharper  virtue,  and  accordingly  armed  their 
president  with  that  ductor  dubitantmm 
which  was  wielded  to  such  good  purpose  by 
the  Reverend  James  Bowyer  at  Christ's 
Hospital  in  the  days  of  Coleridge  and 
Lamb.  They  believed  with  the  old  poet 
that  whipping  was  "a  wild  benefit  of  na 
ture,"  and,  could  they  have  read  Words 
worth's  exquisite  stanza,  — 

One  impulse  from  a  vernal  wood 
Can  teach  us  more  of  man, 
Of  moral  evil  and  of  good, 
Than  all  the  sages  can, 

they  would  have  struck  out  "  vernal "  and 
inserted  "  birchen  "  on  the  margin. 

I  am  not,  of  course,  arguing  in  favor  of 
a  return  to  those  vapulatory  methods,  but 
the  birch,  like  many  other  things  that  have 
passed  out  of  the  region  of  the  practical, 
may  have  another  term  of  usefulness  as  a 
symbol  after  it  has  ceased  to  be  a  reality. 

One  is  sometimes  tempted  to  think  that 


224  HARVARD   ANNIVERSARY. 

all  learning  is  as  repulsive  to  ingenuous 
youth  as  the  multiplication  table  to  Scott's 
little  friend  Marjorie  Fleming,  though  this 
is  due  in  great  part  to  mechanical  meth 
ods  of  teaching.  "  I  am  now  going  to  tell 
you,"  she  writes,  "  the  horrible  and  wretched 
plaege  that  my  multiplication  table  gives 
me ;  you  can't  conceive  it ;  the  most  Devil 
ish  thing  is  8  times  8  and  7  times  7  ;  it  is 
what  nature  itself  can't  endure."  I  know 
that  I  am  approaching  treacherous  ashes 
which  cover  burning  coals,  but  I  must  on. 
Is  not  Greek,  nay,  even  Latin,  yet  more  un 
endurable  than  poor  Marjorie's  task?  How 
many  boys  have  not  sympathized  with  Heine 
in  hating  the  Romans  because  they  invented 
Latin  Grammar?  And  they  were  quite 
right,  for  we  begin  the  study  of  languages 
at  the  wrong  end,  at  the  end  which  nature 
does  not  offer  us,  and  are  thoroughly  tired 
of  them  before  we  arrive  at  them,  if  you 
will  pardon  the  bull.  But  is  that  any  reason 
for  not  studying  them  in  the  right  way  ?  I 
am  familiar  with  the  arguments  for  making 
the  study  of  Greek  especially  a  matter  of 
choice  or  chance.  I  admit  their  plausibility 
and  the  honesty  of  those  who  urge  them.  I 
should  be  willing  also  to  admit  that  the 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  225 

study  of  the  ancient  languages  without  the 
hope  or  the  prospect  of  going  on  to  what 
they  contain  would  be  useful  only  as  a  form 
of  intellectual  gymnastics.  Even  so  they 
would  be  as  serviceable  as  the  higher  mathe 
matics  to  most  of  us.  But  I  think  that  a 
wise  teacher  should  adapt  his  tasks  to  the 
highest,  and  not  the  lowest,  capacities  of  the 
taught.  For  those  lower  also  they  would 
not  be  wholly  without  profit.  When  there 
is  a  tedious  sermon,  says  George  Herbert, 

God  takes  a  text  and  teacheth  patience, 

not  the  least  pregnant  of  lessons.  One  of 
the  arguments  against  the  compulsory  study 
of  Greek,  namely,  that  it  is  wiser  to  give 
our  time  to  modern  languages  and  modern 
history  than  to  dead  languages  and  ancient 
history,  involves,  I  think,  a  verbal  fallacy. 
Only  those  languages  can  properly  be  called 
dead  in  which  nothing  living  has  been  writ 
ten.  If  the  classic  languages  are  dead,  they 
yet  speak  to  us,  and  with  a  clearer  voice 
than  that  of  any  living  tongue. 

Graiis  ingenium,  Gratis  dedit  ore  rotundo 
Musa  loqui,  praeter  laudem  nullius  avaris. 

If  their  language  is  dead,  yet  the  litera 
ture  it  enshrines  is  rammed  with  life  as  per 
haps  no  other  writing,  except  Shakespeare's, 


226  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

ever  was  or  will  be.  It  is  as  contemporary 
with  to-day  as  with  the  ears  it  first  enrap 
tured,  for  it  appeals  not  to  the  man.  of  then 
or  now,  but  to  the  entire  round  of  human 
nature  itself.  Men  are  ephemeral  or  evanes 
cent,  but  whatever  page  the  authentic  soul 
of  man  has  touched  with  her  immortaliz 
ing  finger,  no  matter  how  long  ago,  is  still 
young  and  fair  as  it  was  to  the  world's  gray 
fathers.  Oblivion  looks  in  the  face  of  the 
Grecian  Muse  only  to  forget  her  errand. 
Plato  and  Aristotle  are  not  names  but  things. 
On  a  chart  that  should  represent  the  firm 
earth  and  wavering  oceans  of  the  human 
mind,  they  would  be  marked  as  mountain- 
ranges,  forever  modifying  the  temperature, 
the  currents,  and  the  atmosphere  of  thought, 
astronomical  stations  whence  the  movements 
of  the  lamps  of  heaven  might  best  be  ob 
served  and  predicted.  Even  for  the  mas 
tering  of  our  own  tongue,  there  is  no  ex 
pedient  so  fruitful  as  translation  out  of  an 
other  ;  how  much  more  when  that  other  is 
a  language  at  once  so  precise  and  so  flexi 
ble  as  the  Greek !  Greek  literature  is  also 
the  most  fruitful  comment  on  our  own. 
Coleridge  has  told  us  with  what  profit  he 
was  made  to  study  Shakespeare  and  Milton 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  227 

in  conjunction  with  the  Greek  dramatists. 
It  is  no  sentimental  argument  for  this  study 
that  the  most  justly  balanced,  the  most  se 
rene,  and  the  most  fecundating  minds  since 
the  revival  of  learning  have  been  steeped 
in  and  saturated  with  Greek  literature.  We 
know  not  whither  other  studies  will  lead  us, 
especially  if  dissociated  from  this  ;  we  do 
know  to  what  summits,  far  above  our  lower 
region  of  turmoil,  this  has  led,  and  what 
the  many-sided  outlook  thence,  Will  such 
studies  make  anachronisms  of  us,  unfit  us 
for  the  duties  and  the  business  of  to-day  ? 
I  can  recall  no  writer  more  truly  modern 
than  Montaigne,  who  was  almost  more  at 
home  in  Athens  and  Rome  than  in  Paris. 
Yet  he  was  a  thrifty  manager  of  his  estate 
and  a  most  competent  mayor  of  Bordeaux. 
I  remember  passing  once  in  London  where 
demolition  for  a  new  thoroughfare  was  going 
on.  Many  houses  left  standing  in  the  rear 
of  those  cleared  away  bore  signs  with  the 
inscription  "Ancient  Lights."  This  was  the 
protest  of  their  owners  against  being  built 
out  by  the  new  improvements  from  such 
glimpse  of  heaven  as  their  fathers  had,  with 
out  adequate  equivalent.  I  laid  the  moral 
to  heart. 


228  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

I  am  speaking  of  the  College  as  it  has 
always  existed  and  still  exists.  In  so  far  as 
it  may  be  driven  to  put  on  the  forms  of  the 
university,  —  I  do  not  mean  the  four  Facul 
ties,  merely,  but  in  the  modern  sense,  —  we 
shall  naturally  find  ourselves  compelled  to 
assume  the  method  with  the  function.  Some 
day  we  shall  offer  here  a  chance,  at  least,  to 
acquire  the  omne  scibile.  I  shall  be  glad, 
as  shall  we  all,  when  the  young  American 
need  no  longer  go  abroad  for  any  part  of  his 
training,  though  that  may  not  be  always  a 
disadvantage,  if  Shakespeare  was  right  in 
thinking  that 

Home-keeping  youths  have  ever  homely  wits. 

I  should  be  still  gladder  if  Harvard  should 
be  the  place  that  offered  the  alternative.  It 
seems  more  than  ever  probable  that  this  will 
happen,  and  happen  in  our  day.  And  when 
ever  it  does  happen,  it  will  be  due,  more  than 
to  any  and  all  others,  to  the  able,  energetic, 
single-minded,  and  yet  fair-minded  man  who 
has  presided  over  the  College  during  the  try 
ing  period  of  transition,  and  who  will  by  a 
rare  combination  of  eminent  qualities  carry 
that  transition  forward  to  its  accomplish 
ment  without  haste  and  without  jar,  —  ohne 
Hast,  ohne  Hast.  He  more  than  any  of  his 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  229 

distinguished  predecessors  has  brought  the 
university  into  closer  and  more  telling  re 
lations  with  the  national  life  in  whatever 
that  life  has  which  is  most  distinctive  and 
most  hopeful. 

But  we  still  mainly  occupy  the  position  of 
a  German  Gymnasium.  Under  existing  cir 
cumstances,  therefore,  and  with  the  methods 
of  teaching  they  enforce,  I  think  that  special 
and  advanced  courses  should  be  pushed  on, 
so  far  as  possible,  as  the  other  professional 
courses  are,  into  the  post-graduate  period. 
The  opportunity  would  be  greater  because 
the  number  would  be  less,  and  the  teaching 
not  only  more  thorough,  but  more  vivifying 
through  the  more  intimate  relation  of  teacher 
and  pupil.  Under  those  conditions  the  vol 
untary  system  will  not  only  be  possible,  but 
will  come  of  itself,  for  every  student  will 
know  what  he  wants  and  where  he  may  get 
it,  and  learning  will  be  loved,  as  it  should  be, 
for  its  own  sake  as  well  as  for  what  it  gives. 
The  friends  of  university  training  can  do 
nothing  that  would  forward  it  more  than  the 
founding  of  post-graduate  fellowships  and 
the  building  and  endowing  of  a  hall  where 
the  holders  of  them  might  be  commensals, 
remembering  that  when  Cardinal  Wolsey 


230  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

built  Christ  Church  at  Oxford  his  first  care 
was  the  kitchen.  Nothing  is  so  great  a 
quickener  of  the  faculties  or  so  likely  to 
prevent  their  being  narrowed  to  a  single 
groove  as  the  frequent  social  commingling 
of  men  who  are  aiming  at  one  goal  by  differ 
ent  paths.  If  you  would  have  really  great 
scholars,  and  our  life  offers  no  prizes  for 
such,  it  would  be  well  if  the  university  could 
offer  them.  I  have  often  been  struck  with 
the  inaiiy-sided  versatility  of  the  Fellows  of 
English  colleges  who  have  kept  their  wits 
in  training  by  continual  fence  one  with 
another. 

During  the  first  two  centuries  of  her  exist 
ence,  it  may  be  affirmed  that  Harvard  did 
sufficiently  well  the  only  work  she  was  called 
on  to  do,  perhaps  the  only  work  it  was  pos 
sible  for  her  to  do.  She  gave  to  Boston  her 
scholarly  impress,  to  the  Commonwealth  her 
scholastic  impulse.  To  the  clergy  of  her 
training  was  mainly  intrusted  the  oversight 
of  the  public  schools  ;  these  were,  as  I  have 
said,  though  indirectly,  feeders  of  the  Col 
lege,  for  their  teaching  was  of  the  plainest. 
But  if  a  boy  in  any  country  village  showed 
uncommon  parts,  the  clergyman  was  sure  to 
hear  of  it.  He  and  the  Squire  and  the 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  231 

Doctor,  if  there  was  one,  talked  it  over,  and 
that  boy  was  sure  to  be  helped  onward  to 
college ;  for  next  to  the  five  points  of  Cal 
vinism  our  ancestors  believed  in  a  college 
education,  that  is,  in  the  best  education  that 
was  to  be  had.  The  system,  if  system  it 
should  be  called,  was  a  good  one,  a  practical 
application  of  the  doctrine  of  Natural  Selec 
tion.  Ah !  how  the  parents  —  nay,  the  whole 
family  —  moiled  and  pinched  that  their  boy 
might  have  the  chance  denied  to  them ! 
Mr.  Matthew  Arnold  has  told  us  that  in 
contemporary  France,  which  seems  doomed 
to  try  every  theory  of  enlightenment  by 
which  the  fingers  may  be  burned  or  the 
house  set  on  fire,  the  children  of  the  public 
schools  are  taught  in  answer  to  the  question, 
u  Who  gives  you  all  these  fine  things  ?  "  to 
say,  "The  State."  Ill  fares  the  State  in 
which  the  parental  image  is  replaced  by  an 
abstraction.  The  answer  of  the  boy  of  whom 
I  have  been  speaking  would  have  been  in  a 
spirit  better  for  the  State  and  for  the  hope  of 
his  own  future  life :  "  I  owe  them,  under  God, 
to  my  own  industry,  to  the  sacrifices  of  my 
father  and  mother,  and  to  the  sympathy  of 
good  men."  Nor  was  the  boy's  self-respect 
lessened,  for  the  aid  was  given  by  loans,  to 


232  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

be  repaid  when  possible.  The  times  have 
changed,  and  it  is  no  longer  the  ambition  of 
a  promising  boy  to  go  to  college.  They  are 
taught  to  think  that  a  common-school  educa 
tion  is  good  enough  for  all  practical  pur 
poses.  And  so  perhaps  it  is,  but  not  for  all 
ideal  purposes.  Our  public  schools  teach 
too  little  or  too  much :  too  little  if  education 
is  to  go  no  further,  too  many  things  if  what 
is  taught  is  to  be  taught  thoroughly ;  and  the 
more  they  seem  to  teach,  the  less  likely  is 
education  to  go  further,  for  it  is  one  of  the 
prime  weaknesses  of  a  democracy  to  be  satis 
fied  with  the  second-best  if  it  appear  to  an 
swer  the  purpose  tolerably  well,  and  to  be 
cheaper  —  as  it  never  is  in  the  long  run. 

Our  ancestors  believed  in  education,  but 
not  in  making  it  wholly  eleemosynary.  And 
they  were  wise  in  this,  for  men  do  not  value 
what  they  get  for  nothing  any  more  than 
they  value  air  and  light  till  deprived  of 
them.  It  is  quite  proper  that  the  cost  of 
our  public  schools  should  be  paid  by  the 
rich,  for  it  is  their  interest,  as  Lord  Sher- 
brooke  said,  "  to  educate  their  rulers."  But 
it  is  to  make  paupers  of  the  pupils  to  furnish 
them,  as  is  now  proposed,  with  text-books, 
slates,  and  the  like  at  public  cost.  This  is 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  233 

an  advance  towards  that  State  Socialism 
which,  if  it  ever  prevail,  will  be  deadly  to 
certain  homespun  virtues  far  more  precious 
than  most  of  the  book-knowledge  in  the 
world.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  our  higher 
institutions  of  learning  may  again  be  brought 
to  bear,  as  once  they  did,  more  directly  on 
the  lower,  that  they  may  again  come  into 
such  closer  and  graduated  relation  with  them 
as  may  make  the  higher  education  the  goal 
to  which  all  who  show  a  clear  aptitude  shall 
aspire.  I  know  that  we  cannot  have  ideal 
teachers  in  our  public  schools  for  the  price 
we  pay  or  in  the  numbers  we  require.  But 
teaching,  like  water,  can  rise  no  higher  than 
its  source,  and,  like  water  again,  it  has  a 
lazy  aptitude  for  running  down-hill  unless 
a  constant  impulse  be  applied  in  the  other 
direction.  Would  not  this  impulse  be  fur 
nished  by  the  ambition  to  send  on  as  many 
pupils  as  possible  to  the  wider  sphere  of 
the  university  ?  Would  not  this  organic  re 
lation  to  the  Higher  Education  necessitate 
a  corresponding  rise  in  the  grade  of  intelli 
gence,  capacity,  and  culture  demanded  in  the 
teachers  ? 

Harvard  has   done  much  by   raising  its 
standard  to  force  upwards  that  also  of  the 


234  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

preparatory  schools.  The  leaven  thus  in 
fused  will,  let  us  hope,  filter  gradually  down 
wards  till  it  raise  a  ferment  in  the  lower 
grades  as  well.  What  we  need  more  than 
anything  else  is  to  increase  the  number  of 
our  highly  cultivated  men  and  thoroughly 
trained  minds ;  for  these,  wherever  they  go, 
are  sure  to  carry  with  them,  consciously  or 
not,  the  seeds  of  sounder  thinking  and  of 
higher  ideals.  The  only  way  in  which  our 
civilization  can  be  maintained  even  at  the 
level  it  has  reached,  the  only  way  in  which 
that  level  can  be  made  more  general  and  be 
raised  higher,  is  by  bringing  the  influence 
of  the  more  cultivated  to  bear  with  greater 
energy  and  directness  on  the  less  cultivated, 
and  by  opening  more  inlets  to  those  indirect 
influences  which  make  for  refinement  of 
mind  and  body.  Democracy  must  show  its 
capacity  for  producing  not  a  higher  average 
man,  but  the  highest  possible  types  of  man 
hood  in  all  its  manifold  varieties,  or  it  is  a 
failure.  No  matter  what  it  does  for  the  body, 
if  it  do  not  in  some  sort  satisfy  that  inextin 
guishable  passion  of  the  soul  for  something 
that  lifts  life  away  from  prose,  from  the  com 
mon  and  the  vulgar,  it  is  a  failure.  Unless  it 
know  how  to  make  itself  gracious  and  win- 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  235 

ning,  it  is  a  failure.  Has  it  done  this  ?  Is  it 
doing  this  ?  Or  trying  to  do  it  ?  Not  yet,  I 
think,  if  one  may  judge  by  that  commonplace 
of  our  newspapers  that  an  American  who 
stays  long  enough  in  Europe  is  sure  to  find 
his  own  country  unendurable  when  he  comes 
back.  This  is  not  true,  if  I  may  judge  from 
some  little  experience,  but  it  is  interesting 
as  implying  a  certain  consciousness,  which 
is  of  the  most  hopeful  augury.  But  we  must 
not  be  impatient ;  it  is  a  far  cry  from  the 
dwellers  in  caves  to  even  such  civilization 
as  we  have  achieved.  I  am  conscious  that 
life  has  been  trying  to  civilize  me  for  now 
nearly  seventy  years  with  what  seem  to  me 
very  inadequate  results.  We  cannot  afford 
to  wait,  but  the  Race  can.  And  when  I 
speak  of  civilization  I  mean  those  things 
that  tend  to  develop  the  moral  forces  of 
Man,  and  not  merely  to  quicken  his  aesthetic 
sensibility,  though  there  is  often  a  nearer 
relation  between  the  two  than  is  popularly 
believed. 

The  tendency  of  a  prosperous  Democracy 
—  and  hitherto  we  have  had  little  to  do  but 
prosper  —  is  towards  an  overweening  con 
fidence  in  itself  and  its  home-made  methods, 
an  overestimate  of  material  success,  and  a 


236  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

corresponding  indifference  to  the  things  of 
the  mind.  The  popular  ideal  of  success 
seems  to  be  more  than  ever  before  the  ac 
cumulation  of  riches.  I  say  "  seems,"  for 
it  may  be  only  because  the  opportunities  are 
greater.  I  am  not  ignorant  that  wealth  is 
the  great  fertilizer  of  civilization,  and  of  the 
arts  that  beautify  it.  The  very  names  of 
civilization  and  urbanity  show  that  the  re 
finement  of  manners  which  made  the  arts 
possible  is  the  birth  of  cities  where  wealth 
earliest  accumulated  because  it  found  itself 
secure.  Wealth  may  be  an  excellent  thing, 
for  it  means  power,  it  means  leisure,  it  means 
liberty. 

But  these,  divorced  from  culture,  that  is, 
from  intelligent  purpose,  become  the  very 
mockery  of  their  own  essence,  not  goods,  but 
evils  fatal  to  their  possessor,  and  bring  with 
them,  like  the  Niblung  hoard,  a  doom  in 
stead  of  a  blessing.  A  man  rich  only  for 
himself  has  a  life  as  barren  and  cheerless  as 
that  of  the  serpent  set  to  guard  a  buried 
treasure.  I  am  saddened  when  I  see  our  suc 
cess  as  a  nation  measured  by  the  number  of 
acres  under  tillage  or  of  bushels  of  wheat  ex 
ported  ;  for  the  real  value  of  a  country  must 
be  weighed  in  scales  more  delicate  than  the 


HARVARD   ANNIVERSARY.  237 

Balance  of  Trade.  The  garners  of  Sicily 
are  empty  now,  but  the  bees  from  all  climes 
still  fetch  honey  from  the  tiny  garden-plot 
of  Theocritus.  On  a  map  of  the  world  you 
may  cover  Judea  with  your  thumb,  Athens 
with  a  finger-tip,  and  neither  of  them  figures 
in  the  Prices  Current ;  but  they  still  lord  it 
in  the  thought  and  action  of  every  civilized 
man.  Did  not  Dante  cover  with  his  hood 
all  that  was  Italy  six  hundred  years  ago  ? 
And,  if  we  go  back  a  century,  where  was 
Germany  outside  of  Weimar  ?  Material 
success  is  good,  but  only  as  the  necessary 
preliminary  of  better  things.  The  measure 
of  a  nation's  true  success  is  the  amount  it 
has  contributed  to  the  thought,  the  moral  en 
ergy,  the  intellectual  happiness,  the  spiritual 
hope  and  consolation,  of  mankind.  There 
is  no  other,  let  our  candidates  flatter  us  as 
they  may.  We  still  make  a  confusion  be 
tween  huge  and  great.  I  know  that  I  am 
repeating  truisms,  but  they  are  truisms  that 
need  to  be  repeated  in  season  and  out  of  sea 
son. 

The  most  precious  property  of  Culture 
and  of  a  college  as  its  trustee  is  to  maintain' 
higher  ideals  of  life  and  its  purpose,  to  keep 
trimmed  and  burning  the  lamps  of  that 


238  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

pharos,  built  by  wiser  than  we,  which  warns 
from  the  reefs  and  shallows  of  popular  doc 
trine.  In  proportion  as  there  are  more  thor 
oughly  cultivated  persons  in  a  community 
will  the  finer  uses  of  prosperity  be  taught 
and  the  vulgar  uses  of  it  become  disreputable. 
And  it  is  such  persons  that  we  are  commis 
sioned  to  send  out  with  such  consciousness 
of  their  fortunate  vocation  and  such  devo 
tion  to  it  as  we  may.  We  are  confronted 
with  unexampled  problems.  First  of  all  is 
democracy,  and  that  under  conditions  in 
great  part  novel,  with  its  hitherto  imper 
fectly  tabulated  results,  whether  we  consider 
its  effect  upon  national  character,  on  popular 
thought,  or  on  the  functions  of  law  and  gov 
ernment  ;  we  have  to  deal  with  a  time  when 
the  belief  seems  to  be  spreading  that  truth 
not  only  can  but  should  be  settled  by  a  show 
of  hands  rather  than  by  a  count  of  heads, 
and  that  one  man  is  as  good  as  another  for 
all  purposes,  —  as,  indeed,  he  is  till  a  real 
man  is  needed  ;  with  a  time  when  the  press 
is  more  potent  for  good  or  for  evil  than  ever 
any  human  agency  was  before,  and  yet  is 
controlled  more  than  ever  before,  by  its  in 
terests  as  a  business  rather  than  by  its  sense 
of  duty  as  a  teacher,  and  must  purvey  news 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  239 

instead  of  intelligence ;  with  a  time  when 
divers  and  strange  doctrines  touching  the 
greatest  human  interests  are  allowed  to  run 
about  unmuzzled  in  greater  number  and  va 
riety  than  ever  before  since  the  Reformation 
passed  into  its  stage  of  putrefactive  fermen 
tation  ;  with  a  time  when  the  idols  of  the 
market-place  are  more  devoutly  worshipped 
than  ever  Diana  of  the  Ephesians  was ; 
when  the  guilds  of  the  Middle  Ages  are  re 
vived  among  us  with  the  avowed  purpose  of 
renewing  by  the  misuse  of  universal  suffrage 
the  class-legislation  to  escape  which  we  left 
the  Old  World  ;  when  the  electric  telegraph, 
by  making  public  opinion  simultaneous,  is 
also  making  it  liable  to  those  delusions,  pan 
ics,  and  gregarious  impulses  which  trans 
form  otherwise  reasonable  men  into  a  mob ; 
and  when,  above  all,  the  better  mind  of  the 
country  is  said  to  be  growing  more  and  more 
alienated  from  the  highest  of  all  sciences 
and  services,  the  government  of  it.  I  have 
drawn  up  a  dreary  catalogue,  and  the  moral 
it  points  is  this  :  That  the  College,  in  so  far 
as  it  continues  to  be  still  a  college,  as  in 
great  part  it  does  and  must,  is  and  should 
be  limited  by  certain  pre-existing  conditions, 
and  must  consider  first  what  the  more  gen- 


240  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

eral  objects  of  education  are  without  neg 
lecting  special  aptitudes  more  than  cannot 
be  helped.  That  more  general  purpose  is,  I 
take  it,  to  set  free,  to  supple,  and  to  train 
the  faculties  in  such  wise  as  shall  make  them 
most  effective  for  whatever  task  life  may 
afterwards  set  them,  for  the  duties  of  life 
rather  than  for  its  business,  and  to  open 
windows  on  every  side  of  the  mind  where 
thickness  of  wall  does  not  prevent  it. 

Let  our  aim  be  as  hitherto  to  give  a  good 
all-round  education  fitted  to  cope  with  as 
many  exigencies  of  the  day  as  possible.  I 
had  rather  the  college  should  turn  out  one 
of  Aristotle's  four-square  men,  capable  of 
holding  his  own  in  whatever  field  he  may 
be  cast,  than  a  score  of  lopsided  ones  de 
veloped  abnormally  in  one  direction.  Our 
scheme  should  be  adapted  to  the  wants  of 
the  majority  of  under-graduates,  to  the  ob 
jects  that  drew  them  hither,  and  to  such 
training  as  will  make  the  most  of  them  after 
they  come.  Special  aptitudes  are  sure  to 
take  care  of  themselves,  but  the  latent  pos 
sibilities  of  the  average  mind  can  only  be 
discovered  by  experiment  in  many  direc 
tions.  When  I  speak  of  the  average  mind, 
I  do  not  mean  that  the  courses  of  study 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  241 

should  be  adapted  to  the  average  level  of 
intelligence,  but  to  the  highest,  for  in  these 
matters  it  is  wiser  to  grade  upwards  than 
downwards,  since  the  best  is  the  only  thing 
that  is  good  enough.  To  keep  the  wing- 
footed  down  to  the  pace  of  the  leaden-soled 
disheartens  the  one  without  in  the  least  en 
couraging  the  other.  u  Brains,"  says  Ma- 
chiavelli,  "  are  of  three  generations,  those 
that  understand  of  themselves,  those  that 
understand  when  another  shows  them,  and 
those  that  understand  neither  of  themselves 
nor  by  the  showing  of  others."  It  is  the 
first  class  that  should  set  the  stint ;  the 
second  will  get  on  better  than  if  they  had 
set  it  themselves ;  and  the  third  will  at  least 
have  the  pleasure  of  watching  the  others 
show  their  paces. 

In  the  College  proper,  I  repeat,  for  it  is 
the  birthday  of  the  College  that  we  are  cele 
brating,  it  is  the  College  that  we  love  and  of 
which  we  are  proud,  let  it  continue  to  give 
such  a  training  as  will  fit  the  rich  to  be 
trusted  with  riches,  and  the  poor  to  with 
stand  the  temptations  of  poverty.  Give  to 
History,  give  to  Political  Economy,  that 
ample  verge  the  times  demand,  but  with  no 
detriment  to  those  liberal  Arts  which  have 


242  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

formed  open-minded  men  and  good  citizens 
in  the  past,  nor  have  lost  the  skill  to  form 
them.  Let  it  be  our  hope  to  make  a  gentle 
man  of  every  youth  who  is  put  under  our 
charge;  not  a  conventional  gentleman,  but 
a  man  of  culture,  a  man  of  intellectual  re 
source,  a  man  of  public  spirit,  a  man  of 
refinement,  with  that  good  taste  which  is  the 
conscience  of  the  mind,  and  that  conscience 
which  is  the  good  taste  of  the  soul.  This 
we  have  tried  to  do  in  the  past,  this  let  us 
try  to  do  in  the  future.  We  cannot  do  this 
for  all,  at  best,  —  perhaps  only  for  the  few  ; 
but  the  influence  for  good  of  a  highly  trained 
intelligence  and  a  harmoniously  developed 
character  is  incalculable  ;  for  though  it  be 
subtle  and  gradual  in  its  operation,  it  is  as 
pervasive  as  it  is  subtle.  There  may  be  few 
of  these,  there  must  be  few,  but 

That  few  is  all  the  world  which  with  a  few 
Doth  ever  live  and  move  and  work  and  stirre. 

If  these  few  can  best  be  winnowed  from  the 
rest  by  the  elective  system  of  studies,  if  the 
drift  of  our  colleges  towards  that  system  be 
general  and  involuntary,  showing  a  demand 
for  it  in  the  conditions  of  American  life, 
then  I  should  wish  to  see  it  unfalteringly 
carried  through.  I  am  sure  that  the  matter 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY,  243 

will  be  handled  wisely  and  with  all  fore 
thought  by  those  most  intimately  concerned 
in  the  government  of  the  College. 

They  who,  on  a  tiny  clearing  pared  from 
the  edge  of  the  woods,  built  here,  most 
probably  with  the  timber  hewed  from  the 
trees  they  felled,  our  earliest  hall,  with  the 
solitude  of  ocean  behind  them,  the  mystery 
of  forest  before  them,  and  all  about  them 
a  desolation,  must  surely  (si  quis  animis 
celestibis  locus)  share  our  gladness  and  our 
gratitude  at  the  splendid  fulfilment  of  their 
vision.  If  we  could  but  have  preserved  the 
humble  roof  which  housed  so  great  a  future, 
Mr.  Ruskin  himself  would  almost  have  ad 
mitted  that  no  castle  or  cathedral  was  ever 
richer  in  sacred  associations,  in  pathos  of 
the  past,  and  in  moral  significance.  They 
who  reared  it  had  the  sublime  prescience 
of  that  courage  which  fears  only  God,  and 
could  say  confidently  in  the  face  of  all  dis 
couragement  and  doubt,  "  He  hath  led  me 
forth  into  a  large  place;  because  he  de 
lighted  in  me  He  hath  delivered  me."  We 
cannot  honor  them  too  much  ;  we  can  repay 
them  only  by  showing,  as  occasions  rise,  that 
we  do  not  undervalue  the  worth  of  their 
example. 


244  HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY. 

Brethren  of  the  Alumni,  it  now  becomes 
my  duty  to  welcome  in  your  name  the  guests 
who  have  come,  some  of  them  so  far,  to 
share  our  congratulations  and  hopes  to-day. 
I  cannot  name  them  all  and  give  to  each  his 
fitting  phrase.  Thrice  welcome  to  them  all, 
and,  as  is  fitting,  first  to  those  from  abroad, 
representatives  of  illustrious  seats  of  learn 
ing  that  were  old  in  usefulness  and  fame 
when  ours  was  in  its  cradle ;  and  next  to 
those  of  our  own  land,  from  colleges  and 
universities  which,  if  not  daughters  of  Har 
vard,  are  young  enough  to  be  so,  and  are 
one  with  her  in  heart  and  hope.  I  said  that 
I  should  single  out  none  by  name,  but  I 
should  not  represent  you  fitly  if  I  gave  no 
special  greeting  to  the  gentleman  who  brings 
the  message  of  John  Harvard's  College, 
Emmanuel.  The  welcome  we  give  him 
could  not  be  warmer  than  that  which  we 
offer  to  his  colleagues,  but  we  cannot  help 
feeling  that  in  pressing  his  hand  our  own 
instinctively  closes  a  little  more  tightly,  as 
with  a  sense  of  nearer  kindred.  There  is 
also  one  other  name  of  which  it  would  be 
indecorous  not  to  make  an  exception.  You 
all  know  that  I  can  mean  only  the  President 
of  our  Republic.  His  presence  is  a  signal 


HARVARD  ANNIVERSARY.  245 

honor  to  us  all,  and  to  us  all  I  may  say  a 
personal  gratification.  We  have  no  politics 
here,  but  the  sons  of  Harvard  all  belong  to 
the  party  which  admires  courage,  strength 
of  purpose,  and  fidelity  to  duty,  and  which 
respects,  wherever  he  may  be  found,  the 

Justum  ac  tenacem  propositi  virum, 

who  knows  how  to  withstand  the 

Civium  ardor  prava  jubentium. 

He  has  left  the  helm  of  state  to  be  with  us 
here,  and  so  long  as  it  is  intrusted  to  his 
hands  we  are  sure  that,  should  the  storm 
come,  he  will  say  with  Seneca's  Pilot,  u  O 
Neptune,  you  may  save  me  if  you  will ;  you 
may  sink  me  if  you  will ;  but  whatever 
happen,  I  shall  keep  iny  rudder  true." 


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